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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25517482">The King’s Road</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmaladeSkies/pseuds/marmaladeSkies'>marmaladeSkies</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>From Worse to Merely Bad [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Beta Read For Once, Constructive Criticism REQUESTED, Cruel Language, Dissociation, Gen, Ghostly Victim-blaming, Harm to Animals, Like more than is even slightly reasonable, Medieval Medicine, Mental Illness, Mercenaries, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Tragedy of Duscur (Fire Emblem), Worldbuilding, lots of worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:35:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>36,598</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25517482</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmaladeSkies/pseuds/marmaladeSkies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dimitri and Dedue flee Fhirdiad, they travel with a mercenary band to Fraldarius. The problem: mercenaries are not therapists. Mercenaries are perhaps the opposite of therapists. And Dimitri is not in a good place, mentally...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd &amp; Dedue Molinaro</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>From Worse to Merely Bad [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848643</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>99</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Day One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Technically a sequel to Cruelty, though you don’t have to read it to know what’s going on here.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For hours, Dimitri had been lying in a tiny crawlspace with nothing but the company of his ghosts. His father demanded to know why he hadn’t yet taken Edelgard’s head. His uncle demanded to know why he was hiding like a coward instead of turning back to face his killer. Glenn demanded nothing, but looked at him with a condescending sort of pity. The rest of the ghosts, countless knights and noblemen felled either in the Tragedy or Cornelia’s purges, crowded around him, begging for vengeance, for peace, and for messages to be passed on to loved ones. </p>
<p>	Dimitri had to force himself not to answer them, even as they screamed and cried and demanded acknowledgement. He might be alone in this crawlspace, but he was not alone in the wagon taking him safely from Fhirdiad, and voices carried. The driver might not care, but if any of Cornelia’s flunkies were still searching for him, and happened close enough to overhear...</p>
<p>	<i>“You worry too much,”</i> snapped his father. <i>“Or didn’t you notice they already came?”</i></p>
<p>	It was true. They’d arrived only a few minutes after Dedue brought him to the mercenary camp- there had been barely enough time to shove him under the false floor of the wagon. The knights hadn’t been subtle about their searching, either, and the angry shouting and the thudding of people throwing sacks and barrels from the wagon just above him had made for a very tense time.</p>
<p>	But they hadn’t found him, and he had to make sure it stayed that way. If they caught him, he was dead. He wouldn’t get another chance to escape, especially not with his execution scheduled for the next day. They’d certainly kill Dedue, maybe even the mercenaries too if they had the numbers for it. If he was lucky, they’d make his friend’s death a fast one, but Dimitri was by no means a lucky man.</p>
<p>	After a long while, broken only by the countless whispers of his ghostly entourage, the movement of the cart once again slowed to a halt. A ruckus started up outside- clattering and clanging, the whinnying of horses, muffled orders in what sounded like the Duscur tongue- and then quite suddenly the panel leading to his tiny space was pulled off. In front of him was a Faerghan woman with aged, greying hair. “Come on, get on out,” she said. “Patrol’s moved on enough ahead by now they won’t be coming back for you, and Owl’s been whining about you taking her bed.”</p>
<p>	Someone <i>slept</i> here?</p>
<p>	“Call me Sawbones,” said the woman, taking Dimitri by the arm to haul him out of the crawlspace. Dedue was there, too, and he helped steady him as he was carefully moved over to a wooden crate to sit on. “Because I’m the company surgeon. I need to look you over before you get introduced to everyone.”</p>
<p>	Dimitri was painfully aware of how bad he looked. His clothing was torn and bloodied, especially in... certain areas. He was dreadfully thin from the tiny amount of food he’d been given in prison, and he was sure he had scars showing that couldn’t possibly have come from the battlefield. Still, he shook his head. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”</p>
<p>	“Better an exam now than drop dead of fester later.” Something in her face softened. “But you can keep your friend with you if you want to, and if you start to panic I can give you a break.”</p>
<p>	The surgeon was unfortunately thorough in her exam, though she was conscientious enough to warn him before prodding at any of his wounds. Dimitri already knew he was in bad shape. Two months of inadequate rations had left him bony and perpetually tired, which would have been bad enough even without the two months of torture by Cornelia’s goons. The bones of his hands and limbs had been broken and magically-healed so often that they never stopped aching, and he was almost certain one of his ribs had been healed in the wrong position. He could hardly feel anything under the mass of scar tissue on his back.</p>
<p>	And yet, it was only when Sawbones slowly and carefully reached for the remains of his pants that Dimitri lashed out, shoving her hands away as he jerked back. He would have toppled off of the crate if it wasn’t for Dedue’s arm steadying him. </p>
<p>	“Easy there,” the surgeon said. “I can guess what they did to you, but I have to see what kind of damage they did. Do you need a few minutes to calm down?”</p>
<p>	Dimitri nodded. Sawbones walked back around the wagon and out of sight.</p>
<p>	He took a moment to orient himself. He was on an open road, yes, but the wagon was positioned to give him a small amount of privacy- they were clearly near the back of the cluster of people and wagons, with one other wagon just behind him (sans driver and horses- presumably both were taking a water break or possibly just resting) preventing anyone coming up the road behind them from seeing him. No one else was visible. No one living, at least; at some point during the surgeon’s exam, his uncle’s ghost had left the crawlspace and sat down on the crate next to him. He was resting mostly inside Dedue, muttering a string of invective under his breath.</p>
<p>	<i>“Pathetic. Can you really call yourself a man like this? Look at you- you’re shaking! What a pitiful little coward you are!”</i></p>
<p>	“What’s happening?” Dimitri asked after only a few moments of this. He needed something, anything to block out what his uncle was saying.</p>
<p>	“I needed help,” Dedue explained. “I can’t hide you on my own, and these mercenaries agreed not only to hide you, but to transport you. I can’t guarantee that they’re good people- mercenaries will do whatever they need to survive, and these are more desperate than most- but I can guarantee you’ll be safe. I won’t let anyone harm you.”</p>
<p>	His uncle had moved on to insulting Dimitri’s intelligence and Dedue’s heritage. “What do you mean, desperate?”</p>
<p>	“Most of them are of Duscur, their captain included. No one will give them jobs that pay well.”</p>
<p>	“And those that do usually stiff us,” said Sawbones as she rounded the corner of the wagon, a bundle under one arm. Dimitri started. “Relax, it’s just me,” she said. “I brought clothes for you.”</p>
<p>	She threw a sturdy pair of trousers, a simple tunic, and a smelly but very warm looking fur coat onto the crate. A pair of shoes (they looked slightly too big, but he really couldn’t be picky) and a set of footwraps were set on the ground in front of him. The rest of the bundle- bandages and an odd little bottle- were handed to Dedue. “Hold this.” To Dimitri: “Now let’s get your pants off and see how badly they fucked you up. Go ahead and turn over, too, and try not to kick me in the face.”</p>
<p>	He did, in fact, end up kicking at her. He didn’t intend to. But when a cold finger went to slip inside of him (to check for internal tearing, she’d explained in a matter-of-fact tone), he panicked. He didn’t actually hit her; the angle was wrong for it, but he still felt ashamed for reacting so strongly.</p>
<p>	<i>“Pfft, weak!”</i> accused his uncle’s ghost. <i>“The only people you can hurt are the ones helping you. Where was that spirit when the headsman was having his way with you?”</i></p>
<p>	“Kid, hand me that bottle,” Sawbones said. Dimitri craned his head up to look around for it before he realized that he wasn’t the ‘kid’ she was talking to.</p>
<p>	“Can’t you just give him a vulnerary?” asked Dedue.</p>
<p>	“No,” she answered. “Not in this state, I can’t.”</p>
<p>	Dedue stiffened. “I brought those specifically for him,” he said.</p>
<p>	Sawbones reached down and poked at a sore on Dimitri’s elbow. “This is festering.” Then a scrape on his back. “So is this.” The hand on his back slid down to his ass. “These are at high risk of fester, just because of their location. If he drinks a vulnerary right now, all of these will seal up and the fester will form abscesses. You don’t want that. Especially the ones from this sort of tearing.”</p>
<p>	As Dimitri twisted around to look up at the surgeon, she held up the bottle. “Instead, I’m going to use thieves’ vinegar.”</p>
<p>	“Isn’t that a plague cure?” asked Dimitri. The Plague of 1165 had seen the rise of a great number of generally unreliable and sometimes harmful remedies. Thieves’ vinegar had supposedly seen use by burglars trying to avoid catching the disease from their victims.</p>
<p>	Sawbones was already soaking a bandage in it. “Yes, but I’ve found it’s much more effective at drawing out fester than drawing out plague. Now unfortunately, I will need to apply this daily. It’ll sting and you’ll hate it, but it has to be done.”</p>
<p>	<i>“She’d better not!”</i> his uncle’s ghost snapped. <i>“This harlot has no business staring at your-”</i></p>
<p>	<i>“It’s nothing she hasn’t seen already,”</i> Glenn butted in. <i>”Or the headsman, for that matter.”</i></p>
<p>	Dimitri flinched. He didn’t want to think about that. Dedue squeezed his hand comfortingly.</p>
<p>	“I figured you’d react that way. Now hold still and don’t kick at me again.”</p>
<p>	After he was freshly medicated, clothed, and given instructions (extra rations, and to come get her <i>immediately</i> if any of his wounds started feeling warmer than normal), they were brought around the front of the wagon to meet the mercenary leader.</p>
<p>	Mercenaries wore their wealth for everyone to see. It was a way of showing off the prestige of the company to outsiders, and of showing their status to others within the company. Wealthier, more prestigious companies could use jewelry and fine clothing for this. Smaller, poorer companies had no choice but to focus their wealth on their armaments.</p>
<p>	The woman in front of him wore no jewelry at all, but her torn and carefully-repaired cloak was white bear fur (which was almost impossible to import nowadays, so it must have been brought to Faerghus before the Tragedy) and her coat of plates was well-made, if old. “I’m ‘Demise’ Delle,” she said. “I’m the captain of the Red Bear Company. Your friend here hired me to hide you from the crown.”</p>
<p>	Dimitri nodded. He wasn’t sure if a ‘thanks’ would be appropriate or not, so he remained silent.</p>
<p>	“Now, if you want to leave early, you can. We’ll be at King’s Rest by the end of the day, and with all the conscriptions there will probably be someone there willing to hire you without asking too many questions, even with the condition you’re in. But your friend paid us to get you to Fraldarius. We’d be going in the same direction anyway- with the war between the Dukedom and the Kingdom rebels, there are a lot of opportunities for work- so it’s no problem for us if you come with.”</p>
<p>	What Dimitri needed was to go south, across the continent to Enbarr. But if he was going to take the Emperor’s head, he needed an army first. Fraldarius was the best place to get one. “I’ll keep traveling with you,” he said.</p>
<p>	“Good to know. There are a couple of rules, mind. Don’t start any trouble, pay attention if me, Cake, or Sawbones tells you something, and we rotate out meal duties. There’s a chance you’ll be called on to cook. If this happens, remember that you eat out of your own pot. So don’t fuck it up.”</p>
<p>	“Understood,” said Dimitri.</p>
<p>	“Now get back on the wagon- we’re moving out soon. You don’t need to hide under it this time.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>	The troupe reached King’s Rest as the sun began to set. Dimitri knew the town well, having passed through with his father’s retinue more than a few times. Its location made it a popular stop for people leaving the capital, nobles and commoners alike. While noblemen could usually find shelter with the governor, commoners typically stayed at one of the local taverns or camped just outside of town.</p>
<p>	The mercenaries instead marched past the usual campgrounds and set up right in the middle of the commons, scattering sheep and shepherds alike.</p>
<p>	“Out of the wagon, kid!” Demise shouted at Dimitri. The moment he complied, she shoved him in the direction of a man with a thick beard and a wooden arm. “Cake, you’re on babysitting duty. Make him useful.”</p>
<p>	As the man walked him over to another supply wagon, it was hard to ignore the frantic pace of the camp as mercenaries and camp followers alike set up tents, gathered water, and searched the pasture for anything edible to humans instead of just sheep. The mercenaries, distinguishable by their armor (mostly gambesons, though a few of them- presumably high ranking members- wore chain mail as well) were almost all Duscur, while the camp followers were more of a mix.</p>
<p>	One of them he recognized as the general of the Duscur rebels, from back when he and the Professor convinced them to retreat from the Faerghan army. He was talking with Dedue as they collected firewood from one of the wagons.</p>
<p>	“That would be Hunter,” said Cake, following his gaze. “He’s the only reason we agreed to this job- harboring fugitives is one thing, but harboring fugitives from the <i>crown</i> is another. He talked Demise around to it. Now, you can sit down and sort that.”</p>
<p>	‘That’ was a heavy burlap sack that had been sliced nearly in half and hastily sewed back together. Dimitri opened it. It was full of mud and split peas. He raised an eyebrow at the massive man.</p>
<p>	“Your pursuers weren’t happy they couldn’t find you, and started destroying stuff to make themselves feel better. They slashed open three sacks of peas and two barrels of wine before Sawbones paid them to go away, and <i>that</i> cost us all of our dried fruit.”</p>
<p>	“Oh.”</p>
<p>	“Yeah, ‘oh.’ That horse your friend gave us more than covered it, but some of our people are still unhappy about it, the short-sighted little shits. It’ll do them some good to see you working to fix things, at least a little bit.” He handed Dimitri two buckets of water. “Wash them in one and put the clean ones in the other. They’ll need to soak overnight if we’re going to have them for breakfast tomorrow.”</p>
<p>	It wasn’t exactly complicated work. Dimitri had plenty of time to watch the camp as he carefully washed the wine-soaked dirt off of the peas. Dedue was conscripted into foraging for edible plants, but despite this was making sure to always stay within Dimitri’s line of sight. A couple of youths were playing a game where they threw sticks at each other and tried to catch them, while a much younger child clung to her mother’s leg as she dug up a patch of grass to make it safer to build a fire there.</p>
<p>	It would have been safer still to build the fire at the commoner campground, but that was part of the game. Dimitri wasn’t stupid- he knew what was going on. It was a classic mercenary trick to park next to a town until the company was paid to go away, and making a deliberate nuisance of yourself hurried things up a bit. Everyone did it. Even Byleth had admitted to it, and right next to Seteth, at that.</p>
<p>	(The expression on his face could have soured milk.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>	Dinner was barley stew with salt pork and a variety of greens scavenged from the pasture and nearby river- mostly sorrel and watercress, though some nettle also made its way into the pots before it could be hoarded by Sawbones. One of the groups even found parsnips growing wild, much to everyone’s delight. No fish, though, to the company’s vocal disappointment. Most of the waters near towns and cities had little in the way of fish left to offer, and what was around was very good at hiding from prospective fishermen.</p>
<p>	Dimitri couldn’t help but notice that none of the parsnips had found their way to Cake’s pot. Neither had the nettle. In fact, most of the mercenaries were doing their best to avoid catching Cake’s eye as they rushed to the other cooking pots for their share of dinner.</p>
<p>	He scooped himself a bowlful and took a sip. He couldn’t taste it anymore than he could taste anything else, but it didn’t <i>seem</i> questionable. It smelled perfectly fine, and the texture was all right. Maybe the greens were a little slimy, but it was much better than what he’d been served in the castle prison. </p>
<p>	He finished his soup much more quickly than was considered polite. His stomach, which had been subsiding on small and infrequent meals of mostly gruel for the past two months, insisted on it. It also insisted on a second helping, which he hesitantly took. The surgeon had <i>said</i> she wanted him on extra rations, but taking more than his fair share seemed unwise, especially since it was his fault that they had less to go around than they otherwise would.</p>
<p>	This drew a few stares. Not hostile ones, though- just confused.</p>
<p>	“Do you even <i>have</i> a tongue?” asked a dark-haired woman (Adrestian, if his guess for her accent was right) and Glenn’s ghost at the same time.</p>
<p>	Dimitri blinked, resisting the urge to glance between the two. He’d stopped pretending his ghosts weren’t there during his imprisonment, and now he had to consciously not acknowledge them. “I do, yes.”</p>
<p>	“And you’re still eating it.”</p>
<p>	“Should I not be?”</p>
<p>	Cake snorted. “Is it really that hard to believe that someone would willingly eat my food, Snap?”</p>
<p>	What sounded like the entire camp at once shouted ‘yes!’ simultaneously. Hunter added, “You never wash all the salt off the pork and it seeps into the whole pot!”</p>
<p>	“It’s better that way.”</p>
<p>	“No it really isn’t!”</p>
<p>	“I think it’s perfectly fine,” said Dimitri, trying to head off what sounded like an old argument bubbling up.</p>
<p>	“Whaddaya mean it’s perfectly fine?” argued Snap. “His stew always tastes like rancid sea water!“</p>
<p>	“Sea water can’t go rancid,” interjected a woman sitting next to Hunter.</p>
<p>	Demise pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration, then grabbed the lid off of one of the stewpots and started banging on it with a ladle. “Point of order!” she called out. “Set the debate aside for a moment, because we have two new kids here, and they need names!”</p>
<p>	Almost everyone quieted down immediately, but Demise had to bang on the lid a few more times before Cake and Hunter got the idea and shut up.</p>
<p>	Snap raised her hand. “If you’re letting us make suggestions already, I think they should be New Kid and New Kid the Second.”</p>
<p>	“You suggest that with everyone,” groaned Cake.</p>
<p>	Dimitri raised an eyebrow. “Do we get a choice in this at all?”</p>
<p>	The answer came from what sounded like half the camp at once, and was essentially “no” in a surprisingly large number of languages and dialects. The next half hour was comprised of people offering suggestions and them being shot down for various reasons. Anything related to his fugitive status was out, since no one wanted to advertise harboring one. Anything relating to either of their countries or provinces of origin or presumed status was rejected as being too generic. “Blondie” couldn’t work because there was already a mercenary called that. That Blondie had hair as black as coal was beside the point.</p>
<p>	“We’re going at this the wrong way,” said the inaccurately-named Blondie, interrupting an argument between Hunter and one of the camp followers over whether ‘Cornflower’ sounded too stupid or not. He nodded at Dedue, “New kid, what‘s your story?”</p>
<p>	Dedue stilled.</p>
<p>	“I guarantee you, it’s nothing we haven’t heard before. Everyone here has a shitty history.”</p>
<p>	Dedue was silent for a moment. Finally, he answered, “I grew up in southeast Duscur. My parents were crafters- my father a blacksmith, my mother a glassblower. When Faerghus invaded, I was brought here.”</p>
<p>	“You were a trophy child too, huh?” said one of the youths, a girl with a red bandana covering her hair. “Demise rescued me. How’d you get out?”</p>
<p>	Blondie grunted. “I don’t think he did,” he said, nodding at Dimitri.</p>
<p>	Dedue bristled. “My friend here saved my life. He is <i>not</i> my captor.”</p>
<p>	To Dimitri’s surprise, the mercenaries backed off. None of the following questions had anything to do with Dedue’s history. <i>Dimitri</i> they probed hard, which he understood but still found frustrating. He didn’t like hiding who he was. He knew he had to do it- there was no way a group this size wouldn’t have <i>someone</i> willing to break their contract in the hopes of a big bounty. Even with him deflecting their questions, though, they were able to figure out he was nobility. It was in his voice, apparently.</p>
<p>	“This is going nowhere,” said Cake. “Let’s just call the new kid Anvil and be done with it.”</p>
<p>	“Or Forge,” suggested a mercenary with a toddler perched on her lap.</p>
<p>	 A Faerghan mercenary spoke up. “I like Hammer’s idea. And the fugitive can be Badger. Because he’s got badges.” He pointed at a brand on his hand, then across the fire at Dimitri’s own scars. “Mean ones, too. Great for a mean critter.”</p>
<p>	“We’ll have to continue this later,” Demise said suddenly, staring out past the line of tent Dimitri followed her gaze to the town, where a trio of men were approaching. “It’s about time we got some company.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>	The man in front was loud and entirely too full of himself. Too much to be a mere reeve, but he wasn’t wearing the finery expected of the town governor. A bailiff, perhaps? Dimitri couldn’t get a good look at him without letting his own face be seen, but the way he spoke-</p>
<p>	“-and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out and take your damned wolves with you-”</p>
<p>	-showed a distinct overconfidence in his abilities. The only thing that could budge a mercenary company that didn’t want to leave was a bigger force, and a town this size wouldn’t have much to show in the way that. A few guards, no matter how well-trained, would do exactly nothing against a few dozen mercenaries.</p>
<p>	“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. We’ll be moving on in a couple of days,” said Sawbones, voice cheerful.</p>
<p>	The man purpled. “A couple of <i>days?</i> That is completely unacceptable! You’ll pack up and leave <i>now,</i> or I swear by the Goddess I’ll-”</p>
<p>	“You’ll what?” interrupted Snap. “Blow some hot air on us? Go on, then! Stay all night, while you’re at it. It’ll spare us the firewood!”</p>
<p>	Demise laughed, as did a half-dozen other people. Hunter’s snicker was more subdued, but only barely.</p>
<p>	“Look, just get a move on! You’re making the townsfolk nervous.”</p>
<p>	“Can’t be helped,” said Sawbones with a shrug. “We’re low on food and drink. We don’t have a choice but to stay here until we’ve scrounged up enough to make it to the front lines. Come to think of it, I don’t know if a few days will be enough. Quartermaster?”</p>
<p>	“With our recent losses, and with the little amount of food we’ve scavenged so far? It’ll be a week at least,” answered Cake.</p>
<p>	“That’s longer than I’d like,” Sawbones said over the bailiff’s sputtering. “We might have to borrow a few sheep to cut that down a bit.”</p>
<p>	“You can’t <i>borrow</i> our sheep!”</p>
<p>	“Can’t be helped. Unless you have an acceptable alternative?”</p>
<p>	The man started a rant that mostly seemed to be made of variants on the word ‘extortion.’ And admittedly, this was what it was. It was one of the many reasons why mercenaries were widely considered to be nothing more than a slightly more useful class of bandit. People still hired them, because they were more effective than shoving a spear into a peasant’s hands and pointing them at the enemy, but they didn’t respect them and they certainly didn’t trust them.</p>
<p>	That might change now that there was a war going on and troops were needed for something more serious than clearing out the, well, <i>less</i> useful class of bandits. Alternately, it might just teach more people that pillage and plunder was an easy and lucrative way to make money. It was too early to tell.</p>
<p>	Dimitri kept his head down as Sawbones and the bailiff negotiated a bribe. The bailiff was desperate to avoid losing any of their sheep, which gave Sawbones leverage to push for more grain and even some pickled cabbage. What was eventually agreed on was enough to cover everything Cornelia’s knights destroyed and then some.</p>
<p>	That took a long while, though, and by the time they were done, the stew had been finished off, the fires were mostly just embers, and the company was starting to get situated in their tents. Dimitri and Dedue found themselves with the camp followers, squeezed into a tent with a pair of brothers. One of them looked at Dimitri with clear distrust, but apparently didn’t have enough of it to refuse to share a tent with him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>	“So, thoughts?” asked Hammer, nodding at the tent where Badger and Anvil slept.</p>
<p>	Demise sipped at her tea. Well, “tea”. The herbs that went into what Sawbones optimistically called “traveler’s tea” had never been near an actual tea plant, and changed every time she made it. This time it was mostly nettle. “Badger’s a nobleman, no doubt about it. Everyone knows it, and that’s a problem.”</p>
<p>	Sawbones nodded grimly. To say that the Faerghan nobility was unpopular in the camp was a gross understatement. The Duscur people, of course, had the most serious grievances to air with them, but even most the Faerghans there stayed because they’d been ruined by the upper classes in some manner or other and couldn’t survive anywhere else. “And Anvil admitted he’s a trophy child. Likely in the same household as Badger. He denies it, but that’s what people will assume.”</p>
<p>	“He won’t last the week,” said Hammer. Even if no one tried to murder him directly, which was a definite possibility, mercenaries tended to take bullying and hazing to extremes. Some of them would even consider it to be doing Anvil a favor.</p>
<p>	“Hunter vouched for him,” Sawbones reminded her.</p>
<p>	“Hunter’s new. His word doesn’t mean much yet.” Hammer stared out at the camp. “And it won’t get to mean much in time to save our wayward noble.”</p>
<p>	Demise sighed. She’d lost most of her scruples ages ago -no mercenary kept them for long- but she still didn’t like the idea of her company killing someone they’d been paid to protect. If there was a way to keep him alive without losing the support of her crew, she’d take it. “Hammer, I have something for you to spread,” she said. “Tell people we’re thinking of ransoming Badger to Duke Fraldarius, that you think he’d pay a <i>lot</i> for the kid’s safe return. Sawbones, I want Badger marching tomorrow. Training, too.”</p>
<p>	“Absolutely not,” hissed the surgeon. “The lad needs rest.”</p>
<p>	“I can’t afford to let resentment build up. At the very least he needs to start the day out marching. You can throw him on the wagon once he starts to fade. I also need the both of you to pay attention to anything he says. I want to know who our noble belongs to.”</p>
<p>	“Fraldarius or Gautier,” said Hammer. “They’re in the right direction, they’re powerful, and they’re already a threat to the new Duchess.”</p>
<p>	“They don’t need to be a threat; they just need to be annoying,” said Sawbones. “He could easily be from a smaller house, say Rurik or Galatea. Besides, he doesn’t have the hair for Gautier.”</p>
<p>	Hammer snorted. “Neither does my daughter.”</p>
<p>	An uncomfortable silence hung in the air for a moment before Demise spoke up. “Could be a Blaiddyd.”</p>
<p>	This had the desired reaction- namely, uproarious laughter. “Oh, wouldn’t that figure!” barked Hammer. “Only thing worse than a noble is a royal!”</p>
<p>	“Can you imagine, though? A Blaiddyd with a Duscur servant? One would kill the other within <i>seconds.”</i></p>
<p>	“As amusing as the notion of a royal murder is,” said Sawbones. “I don’t think any of Rufus’ bastards are going to stick their heads out of their burrows any time soon. Not with Cornelia in charge.”</p>
<p>	“And the prince will be dead soon, if she hasn’t killed him already,” said Demise. “Pity, that, since he got rid of Rufus for us. If I could meet him, I’d thank him for it. I’d pitch him off a cliff afterward, but I’d thank him first.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Day Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The mercenaries continue along the King’s Road, but all is not well...</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If expositing about how medieval mercenary companies functioned is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Armies moved slowly, and mercenary armies were no exception to that. Setting up and breaking down camp took several hours each, and the walk had to periodically stop in order to rest horses and people alike. The pace was further lessened as stragglers and the unwell fell behind, ruts in the road forced supply wagons to slow, and scavenging parties set out to look for wild mushrooms, berries, and game animals and returned near the end of the long train of people. Horses, while invaluable as pack and draft animals, were useless for increasing the speed of travel- by necessity, any pace had to be set by its slowest member.</p><p>	Demise hadn’t been on the King’s Road since her merchant days, but a caravan didn’t move that much more quickly than a mercenary band. It would still be roughly a two-week journey from Fhirdiad to Fraldarius castle, and from what she’d heard about the war between the Dukedom and royalist Faerghans, about half of that to get to the front lines. That is, if there weren’t any delays. Cake was a good quartermaster, and always made sure they had spare axles and wheels on hand in case a cart broke down, but no one could fix a flooded road or a thunderstorm. The problem was that they didn’t have enough food to last an entire week- they simply didn’t have the ability to carry that much. Horses could only haul so much without risking their health, and they only had ten of those- two for each wagon and two scouts. Horses were expensive animals, both to buy and to care for. The one Anvil had given them would help, but saddlebags could only go so far.</p><p>	Scavenging would help, and that bit of extortion from King’s Rest had already recouped what they’d eaten and had destroyed by the knights. But even so, the company would probably have to buy some new supplies in a few days’ time. <i>If</i> they could find someone willing to sell to them. King’s Hill had been friendly back when Demise was a merchant, but that had been before the Tragedy of Duscur. And on that note...</p><p>	“Do you think the Duchess is going to rename everything if she wins?” Demise asked Cake. “I mean, we’re on the King’s Road, next to the King’s River, and just left King’s Rest. Coming up is King’s Station, King’s Hill, and Loog’s Path. Not to mention they just changed a town from Stonebrook to Lambert. Not Lambert’s anything, just Lambert.” Faerghus sure loved its kings.</p><p>	“I can see it now,” said Cake. “The Duchess’ Road, the Duchess’ River. Maybe Cornelia’s Rest, just to shake things up a little. All the little towns and villages named after her generals.”</p><p>	“If all the little towns and villages are <i>left.</i> Once the Imperial army makes it here...”</p><p>	Armies moved slowly, but they got hungry <i>fast.</i> Supply trains were expensive to maintain and easy to outrun, and it was easier and much cheaper just to have the soldiers supply their own meals. Usually that meant imposing on villages and raiding the ones that didn’t pay up immediately, stripping the wilds of anything remotely edible, and pulling crops from the fields even before they were fully grown. A large and therefore hungry enough army left nothing but ravaged land behind it, and didn’t much care if the land belonged to the same country they did.</p><p>	“That won’t be for a couple of years,” said Cake. Fodlan was mindbogglingly large, and Faerghus was a harsh land to march across for someone not used to it. “We’ll be able to take on a few contracts before we have to worry about them.”</p><p>	It was true. Mercenaries had a big role to play in the war, even if it looked like it would be increasingly dominated by peasant conscripts and loyal knights as it dragged on. That was why they were risking crossing Faerghus in the first place, after all. Money talked, even if it did mean helping someone she despised. Cornelia was an unknown except that she was absolutely vicious to her enemies. And Duke Fraldarius... he always paid his mercenaries, but there was a good reason the people of Duscur called him the Butcher of Stoskagona.</p><p>	Demise still wasn’t sure which side she’d throw in with, but she suspected it would be the Butcher. Enough money couldn’t forgive everything, but it could make it seem like a problem to deal with another time. At least for a while. And she didn’t know enough about Cornelia to be sure the woman wouldn’t stiff them. Neither of them would be dumb enough to pay everything in advance.</p><p>	Speaking of money, though...		</p><p>	Hammer’s little rumor was already doing some good, though it probably didn’t seem that way to their passengers. Demise knew what everyone in the company was like, and she could tell that at least five people had already eased off on their hostility since they realized there was further payment in the future if the Badger and Anvil stayed with them. But five people was only just that, and there was always going to be someone who thought misguided revenge was better than money.</p><p>	The problem was that Demise only had two eyes and was too busy keeping the company running to be constantly using them on a pair of newbies. Hammer and Cake could serve as extra pairs, but they had their own duties to do. And while Sawbones was great at medicine, she was terrible at interpersonal things. Demise just had to hope the new kids weren’t being treated too badly when her back was turned.</p><p> </p><p>	“Your boy screams in his sleep,” said one of Dedue’s tent-mates- Brice, he thought the man’s name was- as they walked alongside what Dedue was coming to think of as the medical wagon. It contained a lot more than that, of course- using an entire wagon just for medical supplies was a waste of space that could be used for fodder and food- but it was Sawbones’ usual haunt when they were at camp and it was where those who couldn’t keep up with the group were allowed to rest. Currently it contained Dimitri, who had started to fade a couple of hours into the walk, and two of the younger children.</p><p>	“He had a hard time in the dungeons,” Dedue said. The company didn’t need to know this was normal for Dimitri.</p><p>	Brice grunted, though whether that was in response to Dedue’s explanation or a sudden bump in the ground was unknown. “Most people do, and most people don’t scream for their daddy afterward. Make sure he doesn’t next time. Or find a new tent. I don’t care which as long as I can sleep. Only got any at all because he wandered off.”</p><p>	<i>That</i> was what Dedue was most concerned about. He didn’t know all the details. What he knew for certain was that he’d woken up in the middle of the night and Dimitri hadn’t been there. When he’d gone out to investigate, the night guard, Owl, told him he’d been shut under the false floor of the equipment wagon “for his own safety.” From bits and pieces of gossip, he’d learned that Dimitri had apparently sleepwalked all the way out of the camp before being stopped by her. From there it varied- some claimed that he mistook her for a royal dark mage, some claimed that <i>she</i> had accosted <i>him</i> in the thought that he was a thief from the nearby town, and some claimed that Dimitri had babbled like a madman, but no blows were exchanged. One person claimed that Dimitri was possessed by some horrible dark power and had to be exorcised, which mostly got laughter and rolled eyes from the listeners.</p><p>	Dimitri himself had been so out of sorts that he couldn’t tell Dedue anything with certainty, and Owl had been more interested in going back to her post than sharing what she knew. Dedue had his suspicions, though. The last time Dimitri had wandered, he’d thought he was back in Duscur during the Tragedy, and had tried to run away. He’d gotten almost all the way to the gates before the Gatekeeper caught him. This was likely something similar. If he slept lightly and kept himself between Dimitri and the entrance, he could intercept him before he got outside next time.</p><p>	The biggest problem was it was giving the most combative mercenaries an excuse to start harassing them. Dedue had expected they’d start testing them sooner or later, but he’d hoped it would take more than one day. As a nobleman, Dimitri was the main focus of their attentions. This was a problem, but thus far they had mostly stuck to words and the occasional crude gesture. These had only been general insults so far, but Dedue suspected they were probing for sore points to hit harder later.</p><p>	Breakfast (nettle tea, pease porridge, and a single wafer of crispbread per person) had been an exercise in patience and pretending to be deaf. Reacting would only make it worse, Dedue knew this well from his years in Fhirdiad castle. At least when they got back on the road and started walking, few wanted to waste breath on words.</p><p>	He would somehow have to make sure it didn’t go any further than that. Words were hardly nothing, but they were manageable. If anyone tried something more serious, however... Dedue was only one man in a company of several dozen, and he had no doubt that even the benign mercenaries would rather stand by each other than a pair of complete strangers. Keeping Dimitri safe in that situation would be difficult, to say the least. If he had to, he could take him and flee, but he did not want it to come to that. Alone, they could be easily picked off if a random patrol recognized them. Hiding among the mercenaries was far safer at the moment.</p><p>	After careful observation, Dedue was pretty sure he had picked out the main ringleader of the harassment campaign. Happy was a mercenary bristling with anger and general disgust with the world. She seemed to have decided that Dimitri was personally responsible for Dedue’s ‘capture’ in Duscur, and from there had gone on to assign other imaginary crimes to him in her mind.</p><p>	Her main conspirator was one of the camp followers- a man by the name of Ithga. He was qualified to be a mercenary, but had no interest in becoming one. Why, Dedue didn’t know, but it seemed likely that in his mind the rewards didn’t outweigh the risks. Mercenary work was notoriously dangerous. What he <i>was</i> interested in was driving Dimitri out of the group, claiming that noblemen brought nothing but trouble.</p><p>	Both of them consistently spurred on an Adrestian mercenary who went by the name of Arsonist. As far as Dedue could tell, Arsonist just thought hazing the new guys was fun. He also only spoke an obscure commoner dialect, so his insults could be a little hard to parse at times. Snap, the other Adrestian mercenary, sometimes translated for him if she thought it was funny enough. Arsonist was usually seen attached to her, but was eager to seek approval from anyone higher ranked than him.</p><p>	And there was definitely a ranking system. At the top were the founders- Demise, Hammer, and Cake. Just below them were blooded mercenaries, in rough order of seniority. Then former and honorary mercenaries- the ones who had war names, but weren’t actively fighting. Four was heavily pregnant and wouldn’t be able to fight until the baby was born. Sawbones was old and too valuable to risk on the battlefield, and didn’t want to fight anyway.</p><p>	Then came the camp followers looking to become a mercenary, but who weren’t blooded yet. The girl with the red bandana, the one who had asked if Dedue was a trophy child, was one of these. Then long-term camp followers like Brice. Finally, at the bottom were itinerant followers. Dedue and Dimitri weren’t expected to stick around more than the time it took for them to get to Fraldarius territory, and it showed in how they were treated. Even the friendlier mercenaries didn’t want to invest time in them.</p><p>	There <i>was</i> some fuzziness in the ranks. Sawbones was respected as much as Hammer because of how valuable her job was. Cake could no longer fight and could no longer be considered a mercenary, but had retained his position as quartermaster and was still a founding member of the company. Arsonist <i>acted</i> subordinate and therefore was treated like one despite having been in the company for twice as long as many of the other mercenaries.</p><p>	Happy was one of the higher ranking mercenaries. She’d been with the company since before they’d recruited Sawbones, according to Brice, and had fought in many battles. If others thought to follow her lead, they would have a big problem indeed.</p><p> </p><p>	That night, they set up camp around an abandoned farmhouse. The mercenaries seemed uneasy about it- Dedue overheard Happy muttering something about a curse- but their mood lifted when Hammer found the conscription notice.</p><p>	“Just bad luck,” Sawbones said. “No artifacts from what I saw, either, so there’s no call to be talking like that, Happy.”</p><p>	That was enough to get everyone started on setting up camp. The house itself was unusable- the floor was covered in rotten straw from what had once been a mattress and rodents had scurried away from the door when it was opened. Hunter braved the inside to look for valuables and came back with the news that everything useful had already been taken by someone, and also that it smelled horrible in there. But it was a decent enough barrier against wind, and the earth around it had long since been stomped flat by the former inhabitants. No need to worry about sleeping on a rock.</p><p>	Dedue and Dimitri were setting up a tent with the help from the girl with the red bandana, who introduced herself as Seará (“I don’t have a war name yet. Hopefully soon, though!”), when Cake turned their way and shouted, “New kids! Get over here!”</p><p>	The company leaders were clustered together in the doorway of the farmhouse, studying a note. “What do you make of this?” Cake asked, handing it to the two of them.</p><p>	It was the conscription notice. Printed, not written, which had unfortunate implications. Woodcut printing took a lot of time and effort to set up, and to take that trouble just for a conscription notice meant that they had to have printed a <i>lot</i> to make up for it. That it was there at all was unusual, now that he thought of it. Most commoners couldn’t read. The Empire was known to love paperwork, true, but that didn’t excuse sending a conscript something they couldn’t understand.</p><p>	“You were a nob,” Cake said to Dimitri. “And you spent a long time in a nob’s house,” he said to Dedue. “Did that place have any way of making something like this that a printer wouldn’t have?”</p><p>	“No,” said Dimitri. “But...” His face took on a distant look. “When I was a prisoner, the confession they wanted me to sign was printed like this. And they had... odd devices. Magical ones I’d never seen before. It’s possible that they could also have something to make it easier to print things.”</p><p>	“Does it really matter?” asked Hammer. “There’s no way to know for sure without seeing one, and it’s just a paper. Sure, it’s strange, but will speculating about it really help?”</p><p>	“I don’t like leaving mysteries unsolved,” said Cake.</p><p>	“If one of our possible enemies has the ability and funds to mass-produce something as ridiculous as this, it’s something important to consider when deciding whether to make her an <i>actual</i> enemy,” said Demise. “But I suppose we can think about it more later. Cake, call the others out for sparring and get the weapons out- the followers can handle setup. Badger, go help him. Anvil, I want to talk to you for a second.”</p><p>	As Cake and Dimitri left in the direction of one of the wagons, Demise turned to face Dedue.	 “From now on I want you training whenever we do.”</p><p>	“What for? I’m just another camp follower as far as anyone’s concerned,” Dedue said as he followed her to the open area where campfires would eventually go.</p><p>	“For now you are, yes,” said Demise.</p><p>	Dedue stopped. “You’re trying to recruit me.”</p><p>	Demise gestured at him to keep moving. “Who wouldn’t? You broke someone out of the <i>castle.</i> That takes guts. But that’s not actually the reason. It hasn’t escaped my notice that you’ve been having trouble with some of my men. How bad is it?”</p><p>	“Nothing serious.” So far.</p><p>	“Is it Cairn or Happy?”</p><p>	“I’d rather not say.” He’d had enough experience with hostile castle staff to know that tattling only invited retaliation. The best thing to do was to react so little that they’d get bored and find something else to do. After a moment, he asked, “What does this have to do with training? Working it out in the ring won’t help.”</p><p>	“No, but it will make the two of you more valuable in the eyes of my men, which will make them less likely to start something. Look.” She turned to face him. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who to keep away from you. So if it does turn into something serious, you need to tell me. Understand?”</p><p>	He nodded. He’d do his best to not let it come to that.</p><p>	“Good.” She pointed him at one of the mercenaries meandering around the clearing, a woman he’d seen hanging out with Hunter. “Your first opponent’s Bolt. Fists first, then we’ll see how good you are with a weapon. Go!”</p><p> </p><p>	Dinner (barley stew again, but with the addition of wild mushrooms, horsetail shoots, and a smattering of other edible plants) was a completely different affair when there was no naming or negotiating to do. The camp grouped together into clusters of ten or so around a campfire and exchanged stories with each other. When one was done, the teller would prompt another, usually by asking about a battle scar, or a war name, or some other notable thing or event.</p><p>	Not everyone was skilled at storytelling.</p><p>	“Why are you called Bolt?” asked one of the camp followers, a young woman.</p><p>	The mercenary in question groaned, albeit in a good-natured way. “I was an archer before I joined up. Used bows all my life, so when I was being trained to use a crossbow, I kept automatically reaching for the arrows in my quiver. Then one time, Cake shouted in my ear: “BOLT, you dumbass!” It stuck as a name. It also stuck in my head- I never tried to use an arrow with a crossbow again. Two, what’s this I heard about you trying to ride a half-wild cart horse?”</p><p>	And then there were the topics no one mentioned. Battle wounds were fine, sure, even something to be proud of. But anything plainly inflicted out of cruelty was out of the question. No one asked Four why she was missing a middle finger. No one mentioned the scars Hammer had on both of her cheeks, or that her daughter had Faerghan features. Seará’s bandana, which didn’t quite manage to hide the scars underneath it, was likewise avoided in conversation, as was any discussion of friends or family not present in the camp.</p><p>	In turn, no one asked what Dimitri had done to be imprisoned, or why he flinched whenever someone approached him from behind. Apparently <i>that</i> was the line that couldn’t be crossed. Try to make him react, that was fine. Call him mad, or stupid, or a monster in human form, that was fine. But asking questions was something not even the most hostile would do. It was an odd distinction to make, in Dedue’s opinion.</p><p>	They even mostly pretended not to see when Sawbones came by with the bottle of thieves’ vinegar and started dabbing some on the sore on Dimitri’s arm. It wasn’t healing well, according to her.</p><p>	“How come you never tell any stories?” asked Bolt, cutting off Two’s attempt at prompting a story from Brice.</p><p>	“I was a slum doctor for thirty years,” explained Sawbones. “My stories aren’t ones people want to hear, especially since I was just down the road from a Saint Cethleann’s House.”</p><p>	A collective wince went through the Faerghans in the group. The Order of Saint Cethleann was known for great charity work, true, but their free clinics were often staffed by trainee healers instead of anyone with practical experience. And when Fodlani faith magic went wrong, it <i>really</i> went wrong. It could do amazing things by itself, but it could also splice internal organs together. Intestines were apparently especially difficult to heal properly, or so Mercedes had said once, in the middle of the dining hall, while using her plate of pasta as a visual aid, as the rest of the Blue Lions tried not to listen too closely.</p><p>	In contrast, Duscur healing magic relied on faith in Tearvmos, the goddess of medicine. It had to be used in tandem with physical treatment, and the better the physical treatment, the better the magic worked. It couldn’t perform miracles, but it also couldn’t fuse the patient’s innards into one giant knot.</p><p>	“It doesn’t have to be one from your clinic,” said Bolt. “How’d you join the Red Bear Company?”</p><p>	Sawbones had moved on to gently prodding Four about how her pregnancy was progressing, and took a moment to ask the woman about how she was handling things (“I’m nauseous, but it’s nothing I can’t handle”) before responding. “It’s not much to say. I was a barber-surgeon in Wedun. One day Demise dropped a half-dead Cake on the counter and said “fix him.” I saved him, but couldn’t save his arm. Following her looked more interesting than lopping off warts and pulling teeth, so I joined up. End of story.”</p><p>	“Wedun’s too small to have slums,” said Brice.</p><p>	“Well, yes. That was some time <i>after</i> I was run out of Arianrhod for heresy.”</p><p>	“You a Colmite too?” asked the first camp follower.</p><p>	Sawbones shook her head. “Entirely different kind of heresy. I was caught dissecting a corpse.” She rolled her eyes at the horrified stares from the Faerghans in the group. “Look, my patients were asking me to play physician, and barbers don’t get that sort of training. I needed <i>some</i> way of learning what’s normal and what isn’t.”</p><p>	“By cutting people <i>open,</i> though?” asked Brice.</p><p>	“It’s no worse than being eaten by worms.”</p><p>	“Anvil,” interrupted Songbird, Four’s husband. “You’ve clearly had some combat training. <i>Official</i> training, not just training by experience. How did that happen?”</p><p>	Dedue thought about how he would handle this. He wasn’t much of a liar, but he also had to avoid telling the complete truth. Lies by omission would have to work. “The nephew of the head of the household I worked in was fond of me.”</p><p>	“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Four.</p><p>	It took him a second to realize what she meant. “Not like that,” he quickly added. “It’s not a euphemism.” Faerghan servants, on occasion, would learn through gossip that some visitors or residents were to be avoided entirely if possible, and to certainly never be alone in the same room as them. A Duscur servant, excluded from the gossip network, wouldn’t know any of that before it was too late.</p><p>	Dedue took a moment to compose himself. “He didn’t have any other children his age in his home.” It was perfectly true. It just wasn’t the reason the ‘nephew’ liked him. “When it came time to train him in the art of war, he insisted that I train alongside him.”</p><p>	“And no one protested this?” asked Songbird.</p><p>	“He lied to his tutors and told them his uncle had allowed it. As his uncle was a busy man, no one wanted to risk interrupting him to confirm it.” The real story had involved quite a lot of failed attempts at pulling rank before it had gotten that far, but the mercenaries didn’t need to know that. “By the time he found out and forbade them from training me, I had learned enough that the nephew could begin to teach me what his tutors taught him. So now that you know...” He turned to Sawbones. “What’s an artifact?”</p><p>	“They’re horrible things,” said Sawbones. “Rocks about the size of a fist, carved with odd symbols. People like to call them cursed, but they’re really just full of dark magic.”</p><p>	That almost sounded like a Crest Stone.</p><p>	“I’m not surprised you don’t know,” said Brice. “Noble houses don’t have to deal with them, and from what these fellows tell me there aren’t any artifacts in Duscur. But every once in a while a farmer plowing a new field will stumble across one, or a traveler will find one in an old ruin.”</p><p>	“They’re dangerous. Dark magic does weird things to people, and the magic in artifacts isn’t even contained in a spell. You don’t dare touch one, not even with thick gloves,” said the woman who had admitted to being a Colmite. “The Church has a standing bounty on them, but there’s no way to bring them in without risking yourself. Dark mages seek them out sometimes, but that’s because they’re all crazy bastards. No offense, Owl!”</p><p>	“I’m not going to take offense at something true,” said the night guard as she passed by.</p><p>	“If you see one, all you can do is leave it alone and hope no one else finds it,” Sawbones said. “Or bury it. Dig a deep hole, use a long stick to poke it in.”</p><p>	“It’s just another reason why Fodlan is a terrible place,” said Four. She sighed. “That and the people. No offense, Jean!”</p><p>	“None taken,” said the Colmite.</p><p>	Brice raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to ‘no offense’ me too?”</p><p>	“Why would she? You’re a horrible person,” said Jean.</p><p>	He smacked her on the shoulder. She smacked him back. Soon, they were having a ridiculously overplayed fight right there in the middle of camp. It was so much like how Ingrid and Sylvain interacted with each other that Dedue started to feel homesick for their days at Garreg Mach.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“Of all the heretic sects of the Church of Seiros, one of the least well-known is the Colmite Order. The few letters mentioning it suggest that sect was against social hierarchies in general and the institution of the monarchy specifically, though as these letters were from church officials who strongly disapproved of the sect, this must be taken with a grain of salt. What is known is that its numbers dropped considerably after the assassination of King Lambert, likely from persecution- two of the three surviving records from this time period are regarding the executions of known members for heresy and conspiracy against the throne.”<br/>- <i>The History of the Western Church,</i> by Seir Eisner</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Day Three</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Dimitri gets an unpleasant surprise.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>AO3 is being weird with the chapter notes, so I’m shuffling things around to get around that. Can anyone tell me how to make the end note of Chapter 1 <i>stay</i> on Chapter 1 instead of duplicating over to Chapter 2? It was kind of weird seeing Chapter 2 have two end notes.</p><p>On an unrelated note: I now have a Tumblr at https://marskisfics.tumblr.com/  where I recommend fics and occasionally discuss other fanfic-related things. Feel free to message me there!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“How’re you holding up, kid?” Hunter asked Dimitri as the two of them rolled a barrel of sand around the camp. Cleaning chainmail wasn’t exactly an easy job- both it and the sand were heavy, and the ground was uneven and full of bumps- but it <i>was</i> a relatively mindless one.</p><p>	He didn’t know how to answer- there wasn’t a word strong enough for it. The only people who would talk to him normally were Hunter, Dedue, and occasionally Demise or Cake if they had orders for him. The others only spoke to harass him. Happy and Ithga each had a thousand ways to say exactly what they thought of him. Brice was unhappy about his tendency to scream at night, and had made it clear he was throwing Dimitri in the river if it happened one more time. Arsonist vacillated between generic insults and blatant propositions for sex, and sometimes one right after the other.</p><p>	And that was another problem. Everyone seemed to know what had happened to him in the castle. And how could that have been a surprise? The state of his clothes alone would have been enough to tell him, even if he wasn’t being pulled out of sight by Sawbones every morning. <i>That</i> wasn’t going to stop any time soon, either, as he was reopening his wounds every time he needed the latrine. It had hurt badly enough when he’d first gotten them, why did he have to relive the experience for just a simple bodily function?</p><p>	No one looked at him with pity, which was an odd sort of comfort. A useless burden of a nobleman, a viper in their midst, or a stupid child he was, but at least he wasn’t a <i>pathetic</i> one.</p><p>	<i>“You’ll always be pathetic,”</i> whispered his uncle’s ghost in his ear. <i>“They just haven’t figured it out yet.”</i></p><p>	More concerning by far were the ones who looked at him with <i>appraisal.</i></p><p>	“I don’t like the way Two looks at me,” he said, finally. “Like I’m prey.”</p><p>	Hunter seemed to understand immediately. “He won’t follow through,” the rebel general promised. “Demise won’t stand for that happening in her camp. She knows too many people who have gone through what you did.”</p><p>	“It could happen before she can stop it.”</p><p>	“And he’d be out on his ear for his pains. It’s just not worth it for him to try.” He sighed. “You might get some threats when she isn’t looking, though. Remember they’re empty ones, if you can.”</p><p>	If he could. It was hard enough keeping himself in the present. He’d dreamed of escape or rescue before, and even this far on the road he kept catching himself wondering if he was going to wake up from this one too. He’d already had one nightmare where he’d woken up back in his cell.</p><p>	“Why are you here?” he asked, changing the subject. On seeing Hunter’s raised eyebrow, he hastily clarified, “Don’t the mountain rebels need you?”</p><p>	“Oh, definitely,” the other man said, nodding. “But they need me here more. We can’t get cookware and other metal goods up there, and trade is out because we can’t risk letting the villages on the base of the mountain know where we are. Bolt and I are working for Demise to pay for the ones she gave us. Anything we earn after that’s done, we’ll use to buy more. That and salt. We can never get enough salt.”</p><p>	“How did she even find you?” The rebellion had been so remote that it was almost a surprise the Faerghan army had gotten up there at all.</p><p>	“Word of our little fight got out. She went to see if there were any survivors she could take in, ended up dropping people off instead.”</p><p>	“What?”</p><p>	“A couple of stolen trophy children. Too young to keep on the road, not without parents to tend- oh, what are those two up to now?” Hunter asked suddenly, drawing Dimitri’s attention to Ithga and Arsonist. The former was talking quietly with the latter, occasionally nodding in the direction of the two of them.</p><p>	Dimitri shrank back. Ithga noticed and let out a bark of laughter.</p><p>	“Anvil has the wrong idea here,” Hunter said conversationally as Arsonist ambled over to the two of them. “He thinks if he ignores them, they’ll get bored and stop bothering to try. But that’s not how people like this act- you have to show them who’s boss or they’ll just escalate until they get the reaction they want.”</p><p>	As Arsonist reached out a questing hand for Dimitri’s ass, the mercenary grabbed it by the wrist, wrenched upward, then twisted it around its owner’s back and into a joint lock. Arsonist’s pained yelp echoed through the camp.</p><p>	“Firiebog, whit daed ye lear?” asked Snap without bothering to look up from the pot of peas she was stirring.</p><p>	“Dinna dae that?”</p><p>	“Smairt man! Dinna dae it again, whitiver it be.”</p><p>	Hunter marched the man over to her. “I believe this belongs to you,” he said.</p><p>	“Ay, he-” She coughed. “I mean yeah, he does. Arsonist is trouble at times. Firiebog, ye stey hereaboots and keep the fire.”</p><p>	“You see what I mean?” Dimitri hissed as soon as the camp was back to its usual morning routine. “This is only the third day and he’s already trying to-”</p><p>	“Ithga provoked him into it. Normally he’d just ask if you wanted to fuck, which he does with everyone, not just the new kids. He’s just an idiot. I’m not going to call him a harmless one, but he usually backs off if you hit him.”</p><p> </p><p>	The King’s Road passed through the town of King’s Station before it turned east and started following an irrigation canal instead of the King’s River. Going south instead, over a bridge and onto Loog’s Path, was how Dimitri had originally gone to Garreg Mach. It was a well-traveled crossroads, and one generally kept in good repair.</p><p>	King’s Station itself was also generally kept in good repair. Its streets were well-maintained and its plazas elaborately decorated, all the better for when the king’s retinue stopped for the night. Dimitri once attended a performance at the opera house held specifically in honor for his father, though at the time he had been so young that he had been horribly frightened by the actors costumed as wolves and other vicious beasts.</p><p>	He would not be seeing any part of the town today, however, as he and Dedue had both been ordered to stay in the medical wagon while they were anywhere near the place.</p><p>	“We don’t want to risk someone recognizing you,” Demise explained. “The townsfolk hate us enough without spotting fugitives in our midst. Everyone else, it’s just like when we first came here. Stay together, walk fast, and trample anyone who tries to block you. Ávvu, if I hear one word about you splitting off because someone insulted you-”</p><p>	“It worked out well enough in the end. I’m here, aren’t I?”</p><p>	“You wouldn’t have been if Mute hadn’t gotten to you in time.”</p><p>	The wagon was an uncomfortable ride at the best of times (how Owl managed to sleep under the equipment wagon was unknown, but he suspected magic), but as they went through the town it became intensely nerve-wracking. The townsfolk had plenty of opinions about the mercenaries and no qualms about expressing them. Dimitri would have thought they would hesitate before shouting slurs at heavily armed soldiers, but apparently they had reason to believe no one would go charging off to do anything about it.</p><p>	“A kid threw a rock at me,” he heard Blondie say to the right of the wagon.</p><p>	“Well, throw one back!” snapped Cairn. “I’m your sister, not your mother; I shouldn’t have to tell you that!”</p><p>	<i>“And to think, this never had to happen at all,”</i> said his father, peering through the canvas wall of the wagon. <i>“If you’d only thrown your lance two inches to the right, that Emperor bitch would be dead and the war would be over before it even began. No war with the Empire, no war in my country. The mercenaries would be safely elsewhere.”</i></p><p>	<i>“But you failed,”</i> said his uncle. <i>“Just like you failed me. And my brother.”</i></p><p>	<i>“You fail at everything.”</i> said Glenn.</p><p>	<i>“Not everything,”</i> said Patricia. <i>“You succeeded in giving the headsman a good time. Shame he was the enemy.”</i></p><p>	“I didn’t-” Dimitri started to say. Dedue squeezed his hand, but he barely noticed it.</p><p>	<i>“Maybe you should just offer yourself up to Two,”</i> suggested Patricia. <i>“He won’t be able to take it from you, then. You’re a little whore anyway, so it’s not like you have a reputation to worry about.”</i></p><p>	His ghosts continued to heckle him, drowning out the shouting from the town and complaints from the mercenaries. No matter how he pleaded with them, nothing could make them stop. And why would they? This was what he deserved.</p><p>	They were barely an hour away from the town when one of the cart horses, a stout, shaggy mare of some Srengi bloodline, threw a shoe and made everyone slowly come to a halt. Brice cursed up a storm as he went over to grab his tools from the equipment wagon.</p><p>	“It’s always Potato!” he said, picking up the offending hoof. “I swear she does this to spite me.”</p><p>	“The horse is named Potato?” Dimitri asked.</p><p>	“Cake named them,” said Hunter. “There’s also a Rye, Slåbbå, Borscht... Don’t ask me how that man’s mind works. Your warhorse is probably going to be Guompa or something like that.”</p><p>	A particularly loud swear from Brice drew the camp’s attention for a second.</p><p>	“Everything all right there?” asked Cake.</p><p>	“Who was the idiot who put this shoe on last?”</p><p>	“You, I think,” said Demise. “Everyone take a break; he’s going to be a while.”</p><p>	The order was a formality more than anything else- the rest of the mercenaries had already started the process of freeing the other horses from their harnesses to give them fodder and water, and a few of the camp followers had wandered over to sit down by the canal.</p><p>	“If you’re bored, come look at what I found in the town!” Cairn called out, holding up a piece of paper. Not many took the bait, but a few did. Dimitri wandered over for lack of anything better to do, Dedue following close behind.</p><p>	On getting a closer look at it, his blood went cold. The paper was covered in names, and there at the bottom was his own, printed crisp and perfect.</p><p> </p><p>	Lord Holec had been one of Rufus’ most senior knights before being granted a title and additional lands. He had never been fond of Dedue, and especially of Dedue’s continued existence. He had been quite vocal about this, and had argued on multiple occasions that Dedue should be taken away and quietly disposed of before he corrupted the young prince with bizarre foreign notions. He’d had similar, equally vocal opinions about Duscur as a whole.</p><p>	He was also one of the only reasons Dedue had been able to rescue Dimitri so quickly. When Dedue came through the Fhirdiad castle gates on a stolen warhorse and with stolen weapons, he was recognized. Lord Holec had swaggered up, gesturing at his companions to stay back, asked a pointed question about what a Duscur dog thought he was doing in such an important place, and then quietly whispered that Dimitri was in the southern dungeon, the cell farthest back on the right, and to hurry up because he didn’t have much time left.</p><p>	He’d then gone back to his compatriots, loudly dismissing Dedue as a “dumb merc looking for work.”</p><p>	His name was on the list of people Cornelia had just had executed the previous day. </p><p>	“You knew him, Anvil?” asked Bolt, noticing the look on his face.</p><p>	“He led the force that razed my village,” Dedue allowed. On noticing a questioning look from Seará, he added. “He wasn’t the one who brought me to Faerghus- that was someone else in the group. Lord Holec wasn’t the type to take prisoners.”</p><p>	“So many of them weren’t,” muttered Bolt.</p><p>	“If we’re done commenting, I’ll keep reading,” said Cairn. “We’ve got... another knight. Dame Sauer? Not familiar with her. Anyone here had a problem with her? No? Next are Baron and Baroness Rurik, <i>and</i> three others of the same name who I think are heirs-”</p><p>	“Awfully thorough,” said Demise.</p><p>	“Yeah I figure she’s planning to offer their land to a crony. That or she just felt like making an example of them. Lord Vogel- I think we did a job for him once.  And- oh, you’ll love this one. The demon prince himself!”</p><p>	“What? Give me that!” said Cake, snatching the flyer from the scout’s hands.</p><p>	Dedue felt a hand clutch tightly to his shoulder. He didn’t dare turn to look at Dimitri. He didn’t dare do anything to draw the company’s attention to him.</p><p>	“‘All hail the death of Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, last of his line.’” Cake read aloud. “‘For the crimes of murder and pseudoregicide.’ What the fuck is pseudoregicide?”</p><p>	“Fuck if I know,” said Snap. “Maybe it gets a weird word because Rufus was the regent, not the king.”</p><p>	“The last of the Blaiddyds...” muttered Hammer. “I never thought I’d see the day!”</p><p>	“Let’s open the wine and celebrate!” called one of the camp followers. </p><p>	“We’re still on the road!” snapped Demise over the sudden clamor of agreement. “Only <i>one</i> cask, and no one hogs it- I don’t want anyone marching while drunk.”</p><p>	The moment the cheer went up, the light faded from Dimitri’s eyes. This was bad. While Dimitri had completely disconnected from his surroundings before, it had always happened somewhere safe. In the monastery, or Fhirdiad castle. Once while traveling, but he had been surrounded by not only allied soldiers, but the rest of the Blue Lions as well. Now, all he had was Dedue and a host of mercenaries who were all too happy to think him dead and likely wouldn’t be too upset making him so if they realized he wasn’t.</p><p>	Dedue couldn’t wait too long- Dimitri was drifting off <i>right now</i> and if one of the hostile mercenaries noticed, he wouldn’t be able to resist whatever they tried. But trying one of his ways to break Dimitri out of his own mind was equally risky. None of them were subtle.</p><p>	He waited just long enough for the mercenaries to be distracted by the opening of the wine cask before lightly tugging at Dimitri’s sleeve and leading him behind one of the wagons. It was quieter out there, calmer. No strangers to watch and judge. It was the safest environment he could get out here, unless they went <i>in</i> the wagon, and that would be too enclosed. The last thing he wanted was for Dimitri to feel trapped.</p><p>	The most effective way he’d found to break Dimitri out of this state was to have him identify things by touch, usually types of cloth. He didn’t have the right kinds, though- there was no silk in a mercenary camp. No cotton. Just wool and fur clothing, some linen, and if he was very desperate the burlap sacks in the food wagon. Familiarity was important here, but he didn’t have anything like that, and he couldn’t even call Dimitri by name or title. He’d just have to try to improvise.</p><p>	He pulled the wool scarf from his neck and pressed it into Dimitri’s hands. “My friend,” he said softly, trying to get the man’s attention. It...didn’t quite work. Dimitri was still unfocused. He had to keep trying, though. “Please, tell me what material that is.”</p><p>	Dimitri wasn’t saying anything, but his hands were starting to move slowly around the cloth in his hands. His mouth moved a few times as if trying to say something, but no sound came.</p><p>	“Is it smooth?” Dedue asked. Sometimes this helped. Sometimes it didn’t. But it was better than doing nothing. “Is it rough? Itchy? What does it feel like?”</p><p>	“You know, I’d assumed you were his servant, but that’s not quite true, is it?” came a voice from just a few feet away. </p><p>	Dedue stilled, then slowly turned around. Four was leaning the side of the wagon, quirking an eyebrow at the two of them. “It’s not true at all,” he said warily. “He’s my <i>friend.</i>”</p><p>	“I think it’s more than that. There’s definitely a sense of <i>obligation</i> between the two of you. You’re about the same age, you’re not scarred up like the rest of us are, and there’s definitely something very wrong with him. You’re not his servant- he’s your <i>ward.</i> His parents or governess or tutors thought he was too much trouble to handle themselves, so they left it to you to keep him presentable. That’s the real reason he was able to talk his tutors into teaching you as well, wasn’t it? You had to be there in case he went funny like he is now.” She rolled her eyes at the startled look on his face. “You weren’t fooling anyone with the “nephew of the house lead” thing, you know.”</p><p>	It was a horrible thing to think; Dimitri was perfectly capable of being <i>presentable</i> on his own, when his ghosts weren’t hounding him too terribly. But worse was that as a convenient fiction, it <i>worked.</i> He couldn’t let them know that he’d been taken to Faerghus because Dimitri had had the rank to have him spared, and it was a good excuse for why he didn’t have the scars or thinness of someone raised for the lowest level of servitude.</p><p>	“Don’t tell anyone,” he said after a moment. To her, it would be as good as a confirmation.</p><p>	“I can’t promise that- I won’t lie to Songbird if he asks. But he’s a discreet fellow so if it does come up, it’ll stop with him.”</p><p>	Four walked off. Dimitri didn’t look like he’d even noticed she was there at all.</p><p> </p><p>	Dimitri never did get back out of his head. He was just responsive enough to follow Dedue as they walked alongside the medical wagon, but not enough to notice when Four and Songbird came by to chat. They tried to draw Dedue into a conversation, but ended up doing most of the work. The company had plenty of adventures to tell tales about.</p><p>	Dedue noticed that they made a point of walking beside Dimitri, the better to obscure him from the other mercenaries, and they kept up this sort of almost-protection even when the company found a place to set up camp for the night, in a fallow field. When orders went out to gather firewood and forage for something to supplement yet another round of barley stew, they made sure one of them was always with Dimitri and Dedue, and that neither of them were separated from each other. When Ávvu called Dedue over to fish with him, Four went instead. Later, she went over to distract Happy and Ithga when it looked like they might try to approach them.</p><p>	It didn’t last long, though. Eventually, Demise called all of the mercenaries over for formation training.</p><p>	“We specialize in monster bounties, but we’ll take protection contracts and rout bandits as needed,” she explained as Cake started passing out crossbows to a rapidly gathering crowd of mercenaries. “Monsters are dangerous foes, so we play defensively. A spear square is our main formation.”</p><p>	Many of them were already getting into place, forming what would become a dense square bristling with blades. She continued, “I’d rather we all have pikes, but you’ll see a variety of polearms here because weapons are expensive and we have to save our funds for what really matters. That would be the crossbows- the spears are there to cover them. Once hit, a monster will usually charge, but a wall of spears will stop them in their tracks and give the crossbowmen time to span their bows for another round.”</p><p>	“Usually,” clarified Cake. “Wolves, yes, birds, yes. Crawlers go underground instead of charge, but you can handle them easily enough by standing on stone instead of dirt. Demonic beasts, on the other hand...”</p><p>	“We avoid tangling with demonic beasts whenever possible,” said Demise. “You need siege weapons for those.”</p><p>	“I’d give my other arm for a pair of ballistae,” Cake agreed, nodding. “But noblemen don’t like it when lowly mercenaries have siege weapons on hand, so even if we managed to get some, they’d be confiscated quickly. They seem to see it as a security risk.”</p><p>	‘Security risk’ was an understatement. The line between mercenary and bandit was a notoriously thin one. Even the Jeralt company, famous throughout Fodlan for being as close to paragons as a mercenary band could be, was known to occasionally pillage a client who refused to pay up after a job was done.</p><p>	“How do you handle other threats?” asked Dedue. The longer he kept them talking, the less time they would have to actually ask Dimitri to do something in the state he was in.</p><p>	“By avoiding direct fights,” admitted Demise. “Ambushes, picking off targets one or two at a time, hit-and-run raids. Our company is <i>small,</i> and the only people desperate enough to hire Duscur mercenaries have big problems. I’m always looking to hire more, but...”</p><p>	“The only people desperate enough to <i>join</i> Duscur mercenaries are either Duscur themselves or have their own problems,” said Cake. “You’ve met Snap and Arsonist. What do you make of them?”</p><p>	Even setting aside Arsonist’s harassment of Dimitri, the man was just ill-mannered in general and had no sense of self-preservation. Just earlier that day, Dedue had seen him proposition Hammer for a quick tumble, take a cuff to the ear for his troubles, and then turn around and proposition Cake in almost the same breath and with almost the same result. The only difference was that Cake had used his wooden arm for the blow. “Arsonist has trouble understanding what is and isn’t appropriate behavior,” Dedue answered diplomatically.</p><p>	Cake snorted. “That’s the fanciest way I’ve heard anyone describe it. The two of them used to be bandits. The only reason they stick around is because they don’t like the idea of facing the hangman for their crimes, and we’re too low on manpower to be picky.”</p><p>	“And Angler?” He’d been the one to give Dimitri his nickname.</p><p>	“Kicked out of a different group for thieving,” said Demise. “We still have to search his pockets from time to time.”</p><p>	“Owl?”</p><p>	“Not actually a mercenary,” she admitted. “She has a war name, yes, but she can’t fight. All that dark magic did something to her eyes. Sunlight makes her throw up and huddle in a ball for hours.”</p><p>	Cake shoved a crossbow into her hands. “Less talking, more training.” Demise just laughed.</p><p>	Cake handed Dedue a crossbow, considered Dimitri for a moment, then shrugged and offered the other man one too. It took Dimitri a few seconds to realize what was happening and actually take the thing, and when he did he stared at the device like he wasn’t sure what it was for.</p><p>	(And he <i>should</i> know. Fodlan society didn’t think of crossbows as weapons fit for nobility, but they <i>were</i> important to consider for battle tactics. Hanneman had made sure everyone in his class knew their strengths, weaknesses, and general uses on the battlefield.)</p><p>	“You ever use one of these before?” asked Cake.</p><p>	Dedue shook his head. They hadn’t done any practical lessons on crossbows at Garreg Mach. The assumption had been that all the (typically either wealthy or highborn) students would be ordering <i>other</i> people to use them. </p><p>	“Right. So we use two types of crossbows. For smaller beasts- nothing much bigger than a bear- we use these light ones. They use a goat’s foot lever to span the bow.” He held up a contraption that looked less like a goat’s foot and more like a pair of claws. “Relatively fast spanning time with these. We also have larger ones that use a windlass. Windlass bows take a long time to span, but they have a lot of power behind them, which is great for monster hide.”</p><p>	There was a soft click as Dimitri pulled the bowstring back and set it in the lock. “Heavy draw,” he muttered.</p><p>	“Well yes, it’s a crossbow, not a- oh for fuck’s sake, did you really just-? The last time someone tried that...” Cake threw up his hand and hurried over to the medical wagon, calling for Sawbones.</p><p>	Demise pinched the brow of her nose. “Do you have a Crest?” she asked.</p><p>	Dimitri blinked.</p><p>	“What am I talking about, of course you do. That crossbow had a four hundred pound draw; an ordinary person wouldn’t be able to manage it.”</p><p>	Sawbones stomped towards them, anger darkening her face. Cake followed closely behind her. “Demise! Which joker was it? I keep telling them it’s not funny to convince the new kids a crossbow is just like a regular bow!”</p><p>	“As far as I can tell it’s ordinary stupidity,” said Cake.</p><p>	“Give me your arm,” Sawbones said to Dimitri. After not getting a response, she turned to Dedue. “Has he ever been like this before?”</p><p>	“No.”</p><p>	Sawbones didn’t look convinced, but she had something else to deal with so she let it go. “Well, he didn’t shred his muscles like Bait did,” she said as she ran a hand up and down Dimitri’s arm.</p><p>	“This has happened before?” Dedue asked.</p><p>	“It’s a way of hazing the new kids who don’t know any better,” explained Demise. “Usually they just realize it’s too hard to draw by hand and give up, but...”</p><p>	“Physically, he’s fine for training,” the surgeon interrupted. “Mentally, not so much. Too unresponsive. He’ll have to catch up tomorrow.”</p><p>	Formation training mostly involved learning signals and becoming confident enough in yourself and your comrades not to break formation. This was <i>the</i> most important thing, Demise said. One person turning and fleeing could weaken the entire square and often encouraged others to do the same thing. If that happened, the fighters were easy pickings for their enemy, whether that enemy was a giant wolf or a rival mercenary band.</p><p>	Yes, it was hard to just stand still while a three-ton mass of claws and muscle was charging you. You had to do it anyway. Trust that it didn’t want to impale itself on your spears any more than you wanted to impale yourself on its teeth. Even if they <i>didn’t</i> stop in time to avoid the spears entirely, they’d back off as soon as they were stuck. Wolves weren’t boars, after all.</p><p>	On that note, it was also critically important to know how to properly brace your spear. You wanted the force of that charging animal to drive the end of your spear into the ground instead of back into your comrades’ guts. They would practice this until all of the new guys could do it on command, at the same time, whether the orders were in the trade tongue, one of the Duscur tongues, or a horn signal.</p><p>	And there were a lot of orders. There were signals to retreat, to advance, to break formation and start skirmishing with personal weapons instead (used when terrain made a large square impossible to maintain), and to reform formation. There was even an emergency signal, used only when something they absolutely could not fight, like a forest fire, was coming. Demise called it the “run for your life” signal, and they had only needed it once in the history of the company.</p><p>	“We were exploring some sea caves, looking for a nest of giant crawlers that some locals claimed were living there, when the tide came in a bit faster than we were expecting,” Cake explained. “No one drowned, but it was a close thing. We never did find the crawlers, either.”</p><p> </p><p>	The celebration began in earnest after dinner was ready to eat. Cake approved three more casks of wine to be opened, and soon enough all of the mercenaries were deep in their cups and generally making a ruckus. There was singing, mostly led by Songbird and mostly about topics so violent or obscene or both that Dedue was grateful Dimitri had never gotten the hang of the tongue of his homeland, dancing, and general carousing. A little fighting too, though Demise was good about breaking it up before anyone got too serious about it.</p><p>	Dedue soon found him and Dimitri around a campfire, listening to tales about past jobs. It would have been better had it stayed like that, but the topic soon changed to the list of Cornelia’s victims.</p><p>	“Lord Vogel was fine I guess, for a nob,” said Hammer to an audience mostly comprised of the newer mercenaries and followers. “We killed a giant wolf for him- it’d been stealing sheep-, and he paid up afterward without a problem. That was a good job-we kept some bits for more general bounties and basically got paid four times for one wolf.”</p><p>	“Four times?” asked Bolt.</p><p>	“Old hunting trick,” Four explained. “Bounties on beasts aren’t coordinated well, and a lot of the magistrates ask for different parts of the animal for proof. One might ask for the wolf’s tail, another its ears, another its fangs; canny hunters can get paid as many times as a wolf has unique parts, if they’re willing to travel and can get there before the bits get old. It works just as well for the giant ones as the normal ones.”</p><p>	“I imagine the hard part is making sure they don’t rot, or the magistrate will catch on,” said Hunter.</p><p>	Four nodded. “For ears, we can stick them in a salt barrel. They’ll preserve, then you can just soak them in water and let them air-dry to make them look almost normal right before you go to turn them in.”</p><p>	“The same salt barrels we eat from?” asked Dedue.</p><p>	“It won’t kill you, don’t worry about it.”</p><p>	Brice interrupted the aside. “Did anyone know any of the others? Should we be celebrating or mourning them?”</p><p>	“Celebrating,” Happy said bluntly. “Even Lord Vogel. A nob that pays up is still a nob, and you can bet your ass that if any of us tried to <i>stay</i> in his territory, we wouldn’t be left alone for long. It’s the same with all of the bastards.” She glared at Dimitri as she said that.</p><p>	“Speaking of bastards,” said Bolt. “Lord Holec’s finally gone.” There was a general round of nodding and a mutter of ‘good riddance’ at this.</p><p>	A couple of people glanced over at Dedue. After a moment, he sighed and spoke up. “I had a history with Lord Holec, yes,” he said. “He killed my family. My sister was only nine at the time.” He couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice.</p><p>	No one asked him for any more, but the stories kept coming. There were a lot of tales about Dimitri’s exploits, most of which didn’t have the slightest amount of truth to them. Dedue knew for a fact that he had never caused crops to wither by cursing at them, and had certainly never made a game of impaling as many people as he could on one lance. Dimitri <i>had</i> crushed a soldier’s head with his bare hands, but that had only been once. He was just trying to think of an acceptable excuse to leave the circle, when Hunter took notice and changed the subject to another name on the list.</p><p>	No one had met the Ruriks- they were too far east from the company’s usual haunting grounds- but they’d heard plenty of rumors about them. Supposedly one of their younger sons had run off and gone bandit after returning from Duscur. There had been a lot of that, as soldiers returned home without their promised pay and with the realization that pillage and plunder was a lucrative business.</p><p>	“It’s why we left Adrestia,” explained Hammer. “The chance to get paid to kill the bastards that ruined our country was too good not to take. We <i>wanted</i> to take out a Gautier that went rogue- he was an especially vicious bastard- but last we heard he was already dead.”</p><p>	She must mean Miklan. Dedue didn’t want to think about him, or how his life had ended.</p><p>	“I wonder what the Rurik lad’s going to do,” said Four. “His family line’s gone. Any other circumstance and I’m sure he’d be charging in to take over, but now...”</p><p>	Happy snorted. “If he’s dumb enough to go bandit, he’s dumb enough to try to claim the Barony.”</p><p>	The celebration lasted far too long into the night. There was no escaping it, not without abandoning the company entirely. Dimitri never did return from the distant place his mind was in, and Dedue guessed that even if he did, he would immediately fade again once he realized what the company was saying about him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“After the Sack of Duscur and subsequent suppression of the Duscur religions in the eleventh century, overt displays of worship were no longer possible. Public shrines, impossible to keep secret, were replaced with small personal shrines in which every item had to have an innocent use. This wooden bear -a common toy for children- was stained red in order to represent Suomina, the guardian of the underworld.”<br/>- a display at the Museum of Medieval History at Stoskagona</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Day Four</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>One mystery is solved, but another one soon appears.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If anyone’s interested, I’ve drawn up a quick sketch of Cake’s prosthetic <a href="https://marskisfics.tumblr.com/post/627932840060977152/here-is-a-quick-schematic-of-the-prosthetic-arm">here.</a> You can tell it’s quick because I screwed up the straps.</p>
<p>In addition, I’m looking for a native speaker of Scots for help with Snap and Arsonist’s speech. If you are one or know one that would be willing to help me with this, please contact me on my Tumblr (linked above). Translator websites have serious limitations and I’ve probably made mistakes already.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They were running low on food. Not dangerously low- they could last another day at least- but low enough for Cake to start talking about restocking. Naturally, the moment he mentioned that, Sawbones had come up with an entire list of medicines she wanted more of. Apparently she only had one bottle of thieves’ vinegar left. And of course, Hammer had her own list of needed supplies. As did Cairn. And Happy. And Fancy. And everyone with the slightest opinion about what they could stand to have a little more of on hand. For most of the company, that meant any sort of food that wasn’t peas and barley.</p>
<p>	Now, the town they’d be closest to by day’s end was King’s Hill. Demise was very familiar with it- it used to be common for her merchant caravan to stop there for the night. The innkeeper’s daughter had been sweet on her, and would sometimes give them a little extra with their dinner. Demise would usually reciprocate with a blown kiss. And sometimes a little more.</p>
<p>	She hoped that past sweetness was enough to halt the wave of anti-Duscur sentiment that had permeated Fodlan after the Tragedy of Duscur. Not <i>too</i> hopeful, admittedly. But it would be enough if the locals would sell to them without doubling the prices. She didn’t want to have to extort this town like she had King’s Rest; it would completely ruin any good will that might still be there.</p>
<p>	Just in case, she sent Snap ahead on Radish to scout out the area. Snap had a good head on her shoulders, and would know how to get information about their views on the Duscur people without spoiling that she had an entire group of them coming in.</p>
<p>	In the meantime, Demise had a lead to follow up on.</p>
<p>	She’d noticed that Badger had become... <i>subdued</i> since receiving the news of the demon prince’s death. Or at least, that was how Hammer described it. “Funny in the head” was what <i>Cake</i> had said. That he’d been bad enough to skip training the previous day was concerning. The others had also noticed was a <i>problem.</i> Even if that hadn’t happened, that he’d taken the news so badly just showed everyone whose side he was on. No one in the Red Bear Company liked the prince, and they generally didn’t like people who did either.</p>
<p>	Demise had made sure to take Anvil and Badger aside for additional training, to discourage anyone from thinking she was favoring him- the resentment could easily get him killed. He got the commands down pretty quickly, and already knew how to handle a lance. He must have had proper battle experience. Good, maybe he could hold his own if someone started a fight, assuming they didn’t start it when he was acting off. At the very least he could stay intact until someone could come to his defense.</p>
<p>	It hadn’t escaped her notice that he was sharing a tent with Hunter and Bolt now, instead of Brice and Roan. He must have gotten Four on his side too, somehow, because she was sticking to him like glue, and with Songbird too.</p>
<p>	The problem, and this was one that Demise didn’t know how to handle, was that he’d also started talking to people who weren’t there. Not all the time, but often enough to be concerning. He seemed at times to be arguing with them, at times to be almost <i>begging</i> them for something, and when it happened, it was almost like the rest of the camp wasn’t there at all. She wished she knew what, exactly, he was saying. But that was impossible.</p>
<p>	Badger’s ramblings were mostly in the Fodlani liturgical tongue favored by the noble class, and she wasn’t any good with that. It was supposed to be almost understandable if you knew the Fodlani trade language (that was the whole <i>point</i> of that language), and it probably would have been had she grown up speaking the trade tongue. But she hadn’t. Learning it hadn’t even been an option until King Lambert’s reforms began encouraging merchants to travel between their nations.</p>
<p>	Translating between a second language she was merely tolerable in and a language she’d mostly just heard shouted at her wasn’t something Demise was interested in trying. She recognized a few words, though. Names. One of which was recurring and familiar. <i>Glenn.</i> The dead, oldest son of Duke Fraldarius.</p>
<p>	“Jean,” began Demise, offering the woman a pickled egg from the jar she’d been sharing with Cake. “You used to be a servant to a nob, right? Which family was it again?”</p>
<p>	The young woman took the egg with a raised eyebrow. “The Osrithes. Why?”</p>
<p>	“You mentioned once you used to spy on them for the Colmite Order, listening to the nobs gossip and passing on anything interesting. They ever mention Fraldarius?”</p>
<p>	Jean let out a bark of laughter. “Did my employers ever talk about the second most powerful family in all of Faerghus? Of course they did! My lady even proposed to the younger son three different times, not that she ever got a response back.” </p>
<p>	She frowned at the nonexistent expression on Demise’s face. “That’s a big deal in the world of nobs! It’s expected that you’ll at least politely turn them down.”</p>
<p>	“You’d think a family that important would be more polite,” Demise said, sidestepping a pothole. “Was that son known for that sort of rudeness?”</p>
<p>	“Only after the Tragedy,” said Jean, shrugging. “Honestly I don’t know if he even received the letters. Could well be that they were disposed of by a secretary before he could see them.”</p>
<p>	The Tragedy. It always seemed to come back to the Tragedy. Nobs traced their fortunes and misfortunes alike to it, commoners liked to claim that the loss of King Lambert had started the country on its relentless downward spiral, and the Duscur people- well. They’d suffered the most by far for it.</p>
<p>	“The older son was lost then, wasn’t he?” Demise asked as she passed an egg to Cake. “What was his name- Felice?”</p>
<p>	“Glenn. Fe<i>lix</i> is the younger one,” Jean corrected. She fixed Demise with a knowing look. “You’re worried about Fraldarius taking it out on you when you try to hit him up for employment.”</p>
<p>	“Him, and maybe his son, too. I imagine he’s not too happy about his brother dying.”</p>
<p>	“Who would be?” asked Jean. “I can tell you he definitely didn’t take it well. Got all broody and asocial, according to my lady. Only marriageable for his Crest, certainly not for his personality.”</p>
<p>	“Asocial?”</p>
<p>	“He stopped going to all the big society events, much to my lady’s dismay. Spent most of his time cooped up in the family castle.”</p>
<p>	Did he spend most of his time there or was he <i>made</i> to spend most of his time there? Demise suspected the latter, especially if letters were being intercepted.</p>
<p>	“They both have Crests, don’t they?” she asked, changing the topic slightly. “You know what the Fraldarius one does?”</p>
<p>	“Be a shiny thing to make your family line seem more important, mostly. And I guess it also make you hit things harder. Not very useful outside of war.”</p>
<p>	Demise <i>hmm</i>ed. Not useful outside of war, but very useful for a mercenary company. Especially for someone who might try to, for example, draw a crossbow barehanded. “Thank you for your help,” she said to Jean. “Here, take another egg and let me think about this for a bit.”</p>
<p>	As the woman left, Demise turned to walk down the line of travelers, seeking out Badger. Everything was finally starting to fit together. Badger had a martial Crest, and so did Fraldarius. Badger had some serious mental problems, and those fit with what Jean had told her about the younger son- from her limited understanding of Faerghan politics, “asocial” was a polite way of saying “unfit to be seen in public.” The Duke hadn’t struck her as the type to take trophy children, knowing what he’d done to Stoskagona; Rufus had <i>bragged</i> about the lack of survivors. Like slaughtering people trying to flee was something to be <i>proud</i> of. But someone that powerful would have generals, and it seemed likely that one of those generals had made a gift of Anvil to him.</p>
<p>	“What are you doing?” Cake asked Demise as they passed the equipment wagon.</p>
<p>	“Testing something,” she muttered to him. Where was- ah, <i>there</i> was Badger. Walking between Anvil and Four, which was in line with what she’d seen so far. But why was Bait talking to them?</p>
<p>	Demise walked around to the wagon they were near (the medical wagon, of course- Sawbones wouldn’t have it any other way) and peeked inside. No one- good. More people on the road meant less weight for Potato and Onion to haul, and in this case it also meant fewer witnesses.</p>
<p>	“Hey, Felix!” she suddenly called, just loud enough for the group to hear. Badger startled. Not much, and he caught himself before he could look around for the source. But he definitely reacted to the name. <i>His</i> name.</p>
<p>	Mystery solved.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>	“So, that’s Two,” Dedue said, nodding in the direction of the man in question as they walked along the road. Earlier in the day they’d had to dodge a Dukedom messenger; the woman had threatened to trample them, but in the end had decided the delay wasn’t worth it. “And you’re Four. How did that happen? There isn’t a One or Three in camp.”</p>
<p>	“I’m Three,” said Songbird as he lifted a basket of fiddleheads and wild mushrooms, a couple of which Four took one look at and threw onto the side of the road (“can’t be too safe with those”), onto the medical wagon for safekeeping. “Five of us joined up at once, way back when the company was just forming. Cake didn’t have five temporary names on hand, so he just said we could be One through Five until we earned proper war names. But by the time anything notable happened, One and Five had left the company and Two and Four had stuck.”</p>
<p>	“How did you get yours?” The man had a lovely singing voice, it was true, but that seemed like an odd thing to be named for.</p>
<p>	“Sung the rites for Grey when he died.”</p>
<p>	Dedue stopped still for just a second. “My condolences. I shouldn’t have pried,” he said.</p>
<p>	Songbird shrugged. “Mercenary life is dangerous. Stuff happens.”</p>
<p>	A mercenary Dedue was unfamiliar with must have overheard, because she stepped back from her own cluster of people to interject, “Except Grey wasn’t killed because of “mercenary life.” He was murdered.”</p>
<p>	Four snorted. “He would have died from his injuries even if the healer hadn’t fucked him up, Bait.”</p>
<p>	“We don’t know that! Sometimes shit like that gets better on its own!”	</p>
<p>	“Grey took a bad hit and started bleeding on the inside.” Four explained. “Pretty badly, too. Sawbones couldn’t do anything about it, so we looked into magical healing.” She spat on the ground. “No one we found would treat him, no matter how much we offered. So we made the last one do it at knifepoint.”</p>
<p>	“He looked like he was doing better,” she continued. “Wasn’t clammy or woozy anymore. But then a couple days later he got sick. Really sick. He was festering on the inside- Sawbones called it <i>sepsis</i> and said there wasn’t anything to be done, that it was going to be nasty, lingering feverish death. She offered him something to make it a fast one. He took it.”</p>
<p>	“Demise let Sawbones take a peek inside his body, after,” Songbird said. “I didn’t look, myself- I’d rather remember him looking whole instead of <i>that.</i>”</p>
<p>	Bait grunted. “I did. And I listened to what Sawbones was saying to herself. That bitch of a healer stopped the flow of <i>all</i> the blood to one of his organs instead of just stopping the part that was bleeding into his belly, and it died and started rotting inside of him. I tried to talk Demise into turning back so we could skin that healer alive, but-”</p>
<p>	“Hey, Felix!” came a shout from the wagon beside them. Next to Dedue, Dimitri jerked.</p>
<p>	Bait narrowed her eyes at him, then slowly raised her gaze to the origin of the sound. “Demise? What are you doing?”</p>
<p>	The company leader gave her a flat look. “Thinking about what name to give the new horse. Testing how it sounds to call out.”</p>
<p>	“Really. You’re going to give a horse a Faerghan name?”</p>
<p>	She shrugged. “It’s either that or let Cake name him Black Pudding. Felix is shorter.”</p>
<p>	Bait grumbled and hurried back to her original group, as Dedue scrambled to think of a topic that <i>didn’t</i> involve one of Dimitri’s childhood friends, especially since he didn’t particularly want to hear more about the previous one. “Are you a shaman, then?”</p>
<p>	Songbird laughed. “I wish! I was just starting my apprenticeship when the Tragedy happened. The rites are just about all I know.”</p>
<p>	A sharp whistle cut through the chatter. As one, the company turned their eyes to the front of the line, where Snap was coming back from her scouting trip. The travelers slowed to a halt as Snap hurried her horse over to Hammer and started talking to her in a low, frantic voice.</p>
<p>	From there the gossip started to spread down the line of mercenaries and camp followers, Cake and Hammer guiding it so the message didn’t get too stretched out, as Demise rushed up the line to hear the word straight from the source. Songbird followed her, aiming to get the news early, then rushed right back.</p>
<p>	“It’s King’s Hill,” Songbird said. “Something’s wrong with it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>	The village was completely silent. No one was outside, working or otherwise going about their day. No children played, no dogs barked. Clothes lay hanging half-off their lines, disturbed by wind and never set straight again. Alongside the irrigation canal, a washing paddle lay half-buried by silt.</p>
<p>	The stable just outside of town was also silent, but unlike everything else they saw it wasn’t empty; the paddock outside it contained a thin, malnourished horse that barely reacted as they approached or as Brice rushed to its side. Inside the stable, three more laid dead.</p>
<p>	“She was out here for a week, I’d say. Ate all the grass in the paddock, then had nothing except maybe a weed or two here and there,” Brice said, running a hand along the horse’s flank. “The others- there was no water in there for them. Who would do something like this?”</p>
<p>	“A week?” Demise asked. “Fuck, no wonder King’s Station was on edge so much. First time we went through would have just about been when they lost contact- they must have thought we had something to do with it.”	</p>
<p>	As Brice badgered Seará into bringing some fodder from the wagons (“Not too much! A starved horse will gorge itself to death if you let it!”), Demise arranged teams to investigate the town proper.</p>
<p>	It became obvious that the town had been emptied of people, and quickly at that- some of the houses still had the rotten, bug-eaten remains of meals set at the tables. None of them had obvious signs of struggle, though many had clearly been looted after the fact- not one of the places Dimitri visited with Cake’s group had a single piece of silverware left, and some of them were fairly wealthy homes.</p>
<p>	“I’m surprised there’s anything left at all,” said Dimitri after the fifth house. This one, like the others, looked perfectly normal except for the layer of dust on everything. “That farmhouse had been emptied out.”</p>
<p>	“If you stumbled across a whole-ass town where everyone had vanished, how long would <i>you</i> stick around to plunder?” asked Hunter.</p>
<p>	“An hour, just like at our last job,” said Cake.</p>
<p>	Hunter blinked. “That wasn’t meant to- what does <i>that</i> mean?” he asked. “You’ve seen this before?”</p>
<p>	The quartermaster sighed. “Our last non-bounty job was a protection contract for a town called Tethra. It was a logging town in Mateus territory- loggers would cut trees in the forest and send them down the Gwenhwyvar to the town to be processed. Problem was, there were demonic beasts in the forest.”</p>
<p>	“I asked a simple question, not for a story,” grumbled Hunter.</p>
<p>	Dedue ignored him. “I thought you didn’t fight demonic beasts?” he asked.</p>
<p>	“You’re right, we don’t. These were <i>old</i> beasts. They knew the touch of weapons, and they knew they didn’t like it. When they saw us in formation they’d usually retreat back into the woods and leave the loggers alone. No need for us to fight, maybe get eaten, maybe merely be crippled for life. It was a good gig.”</p>
<p>	He pulled a wooden horse out of a cradle, running his thumb along the ridges of its mane, before tucking it into his coinpurse. “We weren’t welcome in Tethra itself. Our camp was a ways away, in a part of the woods they’d already cleared out. They’d bring us payment and meals, and in return we’d agree to keep defending them another day. So when it all went wrong, we weren’t there.”</p>
<p>	“A couple of the local children had snuck up to our camp and were bugging some of the followers for stories about our adventures. We humored them for a while, but before too long Katina went to go take them back home. She came back, with the children, saying everyone in town was just <i>gone.</i> I left her to calm the kids and took a few folks down to help investigate. It was just like this town here. Meals were left half-eaten, laundry lay on the river shore mid-wash. Dogs roamed the streets, crying for their owners. We went door to door, looking for anyone who might be able to tell us what happened. But we couldn’t find anything.”</p>
<p>	“Around then, the rest of the company came back from their latest job with a few of the loggers, and let me tell you, the loggers were just as surprised as we were. A couple of them tried to blame us for it, somehow, but that died out pretty quick. We’re not a big group, and it was a big town.”</p>
<p>	“What did you do?” asked Dimitri.</p>
<p>	Cake shrugged as he crouched down to lift the trapdoor on a cellar. “What else could we do? We didn’t want to stick around for long- whatever spirited away the townsfolk could come back for us. And there wasn’t a point in staying if we didn’t have a job anymore. So we agreed to take the loggers somewhere safe, then took exactly one hour to strip the town of valuables.”</p>
<p>	At the look on Dimitri’s face, Cake rolled his eyes. “Well <i>they</i> weren’t using them! Besides, we hadn’t gotten our day’s pay yet. We left the loggers in the next village over, but they wouldn’t take the kids because of some superstitious nonsense. We left ‘em in Fhirdiad. Hunter, can you climb down there and see if there’s anything we can use? I can’t do ladders.”</p>
<p>	The rebel general grunted in annoyance, but obeyed. “I’m feeling more than seeing, but it seems to be mostly root vegetables,” he called up. “Onions, beets, and turnips. Though there <i>is</i> some rakfisk- no wait, that’s lutefisk. Gonna have to leave it. I’m passing up some beets.” </p>
<p>	‘Passing’ apparently meant <i>throwing,</i> and Dimitri had to rush to catch the bag before it could fall back down into the cellar. Dedue caught the sack of onions that followed.</p>
<p>	The other groups had had better luck. The governor’s house had contained a fair amount of jewelry that had been missed by previous looters, as well as a variety of food and drink that would have been too expensive to try to buy- brandy, confits, and imported spices. Demise’s group had found five polearms, seven crossbows, and a large number of bolts scattered in various homes around the governor’s house (“Probably belonged to the guards,” Songbird said). Sawbones’ group had raided the apothecary and come back with an absurd number of powders in confusingly-labeled jars, as well as a couple of devices that Dimitri was very glad he didn’t get a closer look at.</p>
<p>	But the best find had been by Hammer. Her group had gone exploring the fields around the town and had managed to bring in not just three goats, but a healthy ox as well. Demise promised that with the goats and the brandy found in the governor’s home, the night’s dinner would be quite rich. It would also be as far from here as possible, as she had no intention of making the company stop for the night in a place where everyone had vanished. This promise alone did more for morale than any of the money or goods scavenged from the town.</p>
<p>	The ox was the real prize. There wasn’t a wagon in town that could be handled with only one ox (and apparently there were logistical issues with harnessing an ox and a horse to the same wagon), but they’d found a small cart at the stable that would work for now. It would let them carry more fodder and firewood, at the very least.</p>
<p>	Not that there wasn’t some discussion about what else they could take with them.	</p>
<p>	“Brice, we can’t bring the horse,” said Demise. “It won’t keep up with the others.”</p>
<p>	“I can’t just leave her,” the man argued. “Look, I can bring her up to a proper weight. She was a good horse once upon a time, and she’ll be one again if she gets the right care.”</p>
<p>	“Will spending hours at a time walking on the road do her any good? When she’s <i>that</i> thin?”</p>
<p>	Brice didn’t have an answer to that. Dimitri could see why- he hadn’t spent that much time working in the stables at Garreg Mach, but he could tell that the horse was by no means ready for that intensive of a journey.</p>
<p>	In the end, Brice left the company. He felt too sorry for that horse to leave it to either starve or eat itself to death. He kept his brother and Jean with him, as well. Demise promised that if they wanted to join up again when the company next came by, they’d be welcome. Dimitri wasn’t even sure how much of it was Demise just being polite about it- farriers were valuable, and while it was true that they weren’t completely out of luck in that regard- Cairn had been one before fleeing Fhirdiad- Brice’s expertise would be sorely missed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>	Dimitri should have known better than to hope his ghosts would be too distracted by the town to harass him more. The moment they were back on the road, they came out.</p>
<p>	“This never would have happened if you’d been a proper heir,” said his father. “I certainly wouldn’t have let a village- much less two!- disappear under my watch. And what did you do? Sit back and watch it happen. You even stole from them!”</p>
<p>	The sack of turnips in his arms (the company had taken so much that it couldn’t all fit on the wagons) seemed to grow heavier. “I know,” he whispered. “But they weren’t...”</p>
<p>	“Are you really about to say that? Really?” asked Patricia. “You know who else excuses robbery with ‘they weren’t using it?’ Bandits. It sickens me to think of you as my son. I’m only relieved you aren’t my real one.”</p>
<p>	“Mother!”</p>
<p>	“Don’t call me that!” she snapped. “You of all people don’t deserve to call me that!”</p>
<p>	“Mother, please-”</p>
<p>	“Can someone shut him up?” called a very real and non-ghostly voice from somewhere behind him. “It’s fuckin’ creepy when he does that,” continued Snap.</p>
<p>	“Gae hit him some,” suggested Arsonist.</p>
<p>	“Gae hit him yersel.”</p>
<p>	“Na. He’s a wancannie wicht.”</p>
<p>	“Than hou daed ye think A’d dae it?”</p>
<p>	The conversation continued for a longer time, but Dimitri couldn’t hear it. It was hard to hear <i>anything,</i> even his own thoughts; his father had started screaming directly in his ear, so loud that it drowned out everything around him. He couldn’t hear anything. He could hardly <i>see</i> anything, the noise was so distracting. All he could perceive was the gentle touch of Dedue’s hand on the small of his back.</p>
<p>	“Father- please stop! I’ll listen, I swear-”</p>
<p>	“Bullshit!” shouted Glenn in his other ear. “You know you won’t. You won’t listen to anything. If you had even the slightest inkling to, you’d already be in Enbarr with your lance in the Emperor’s chest.”</p>
<p>	“Glenn, please!”</p>
<p>	Something wet and sticky struck him in the back of the head. He turned to look, even as Glenn joined his father in screaming in his ear. Happy was already pulling another apple from the sack they’d been passing from mercenary to mercenary. He glanced down at the fallen apple core as Arsonist casually kicked it under a wagon.</p>
<p>	Snap asked him something, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t know anything.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“While Unified Fodlan is commonly thought of as only having one language, this is not the case. While it is true that Old Fodlani (formerly known as Liturgical Fodlani) is no longer spoken, and can no longer be considered an official language of Unified Fodlan, there are over a dozen other native languages that most citizens have never heard of. Most are in danger of extinction in the next few generations, as increasing urbanization pushes out traditional rural communities, but a few- such as Widtongue, spoken in the Sauin region- are quite healthy and are likely to survive... <i>unless</i> the Clean Education Act is allowed to pass.</p>
<p>By donating to the Fodlani Language Society, you can become a vital part of preserving our native tongues. We have already made great strides in preserving Wessing and Saindsoider, both of which have successfully increased their number of native speakers to the low hundreds, and are working on reconstructing Old Marcher. But none of this will matter unless we successfully shut down the Clean Education Act. Children must be allowed to learn in their native language!“<br/>- TV advert</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Day Five</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Dimitri has an accident. Dedue has a follower.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter was an absolute bear to get through, not helped by that at one point I rewrote it entirely. Hope the end result is worth the wait!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dimitri was in a cold, dark cave full of fog and the smell of rust. He knew he had to leave- this place wasn’t for the living, but the hands around his ankles hindered him as he waded through knee-deep water. He slipped on slick algae, cut his feet on jagged rocks, as he struggled to where he thought the exit must be.</p><p>	“Stupid boy,” whispered a voice in his ear.</p><p>	“Weak little thing,” whispered another.</p><p>	<i>Don’t look,</i> he thought to himself. <i>If you look, you give them power.</i></p><p>	Something grabbed onto his shoulder. “Traitor,” growled his father. “Do you really think you can shed us so easily?”</p><p>	“He wants to forget us,” said Glenn, wrapping a hand around his neck. </p><p>	Someone plucked at his clothes. Another grasped at his hair, twining it around cold fingers. He tried to keep walking. <i>There has to be a way out,</i> he tried to convince himself, even though he knew there wasn’t. There was never a way out. This cave was all he had known since the Tragedy. He had spent the past four years wandering through its filthy corridors- if there was an exit, he would have found it already. Sometimes the ghosts gave him hints- turn right here, turn around, you’re going the wrong way- but he never knew if they were telling the truth or not. The instructions certainly never led him to daylight. Once, he’d tried to do the opposite of what they’d said, only to have his uncle laugh in his face and ask if he truly wanted to stay with them that badly.</p><p>	Tonight, his father’s retinue was all going in one direction, drifting through the walls and floor. He didn’t know what was there, but he knew that it was not a place he wanted to go. Terrible things were further underground. But opposite them was nothing but stone ceiling and the endless expanse of the lake he was struggling to wade through.</p><p>	One of the hands around his ankles stretched up and yanked at his knee, sending him crashing into the filthy water. It was cold, so horribly cold and that he couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but sputter as freezing water rushed into his nose and mouth and he-</p><p>	He wasn’t dreaming anymore, but the water and the mud was still there and it was deep but not so deep that he couldn’t try to stand up and walk but his feet were still sinking and-</p><p>	He couldn’t get his feet out of the mud. They wouldn’t budge at all- he’d sunk in almost up to his knees and he was trapped and he couldn’t even turn around to try to find the camp and he tried to reach into the water to dig them out but it was up to the top of his chest and if he ducked down at all he’d put his head into the freezing cold and he’d fall back into the endless caves, so all he could do was try to dig next to his knees and it wasn’t enough and he was losing the feeling in his hands and feet.</p><p>	There was a commotion from behind him. “Someone’s in the water!” a voice called, and he wasn’t sure if it was Bolt or Owl or Patricia but someone knew he was there, but-</p><p>	A rope struck him on the shoulder- he grabbed it, pulled, tried to wrench himself free...</p><p>	A splash out of sight, freezing water spraying the back of his head. Cursing in an unknown language. “Don’t pull me <i>in,</i> sunshine!” a woman yelled at him. More splashing, but smooth and controlled. “Hunter, grab me! This bank’s slippery.”</p><p>	Another rope, this one looping around him in a way that either end stretched back behind him, toward the camp. “Wrap your arms around it!” a man’s voice shouted. “Don’t pull! Let us do the pulling!”</p><p>	It was hard for him to do; his hands were stiff with cold and he could barely even see the rope to wrap it around his arms, but he managed it after a few moments.</p><p>	It was like the mud was sucking him in; whenever his rescuers made some small amount of headway, his feet would be drawn back down into the muck. But little by little, it worked. Inch by inch, his legs were pulled free, and with every inch by inch, it became easier to pull him further from the mud. When his feet were finally loose, he shot toward the side of the canal like an arrow loosed from a bow.</p><p>	There were hands all over him, lifting him from the canal, peeling the rope from his arms, wiping the water from his skin and the mud from his legs, and carrying him away. He could barely feel them. Sometimes he couldn’t feel them at all- he only knew he was shedding mud because he could hear someone muttering about it. He didn’t know who was even there, if they were real or ghostly or friend or foe and was he even still awake anymore? When yet another pair of hands started to peel off his undertunic, he lashed out, clumsily flailing his arms as much as his numb, stiff muscles could manage.</p><p>	Someone yelped and started swearing in the Duscur tongue, which meant his aim must have been true. A small part of his mind whispered that this was <i>bad,</i> that Dedue wouldn’t let anyone hurt him in that way again, and that someone who’d just been hit wouldn’t want to help him, but it was drowned out by the part of him that was just one long, drawn-out scream.</p><p>	He was breathing hard, Dimitri distantly realized. Short staccato breaths so forceful that each one sent a lance of pain through his chest. He felt faint, like he couldn’t get enough air. Like he was still underwater, waiting to drown. He was tense all over, even as the people carrying him set him down in a tent, on top of a thick pile of bedrolls layered on top of each other.</p><p>	“I’m here,” a voice said. Dedue. A hand touched him lightly on the shoulder. “There’s no one here but me.” Pressure on his back. A cloak? “Do you know where you are?” </p><p>	He wanted to answer, but the words wouldn’t leave his mouth. He was pretty sure he was somewhere in Faerghus. Not Duscur, and not Fhirdiad castle, which is what Dedue was really asking him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d woken up thinking he was... elsewhere.</p><p>	The tent-flap lifted, and in came Bolt bearing an armful of blankets. She threw one on him. Hands- Glenn’s, he thought- started rubbing it on his skin, trying to warm him up. “What happened?” he finally managed to get out as she started to throw the others on him, one at a time.</p><p>	“You sleepwalked,” answered Bolt. “Picked your way around us- not sure how <i>that</i> happened without us noticing- and went right into the canal. You pulled Owl in when she tried to get you out- I’d apologize soonish if I were you- but by then the others were up.”</p><p>	It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up and actually <i>been</i> elsewhere. He didn’t usually end up in a canal, though. “Is she all right?” he asked.</p><p>	“She’s well enough to be pissed off.”</p><p>	Well, Dimitri supposed that was better than the alternative.</p><p>	Sensation started to come back to his skin, itchy little pins and needles that grew worse with contact with even the softest thing. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to find some sort of relief, but every shift just made his skin hurt more and more. He started shaking, teeth chattering and cutting off any attempt to ask more about what was going on.</p><p>	Not that he would have been able to fully understand it- he’d only gotten about one in three of the words said about him sleepwalking. It was like there was a sort of fog between his ears and his brain. <i>It’s the cold,</i> said the part of him that had spent almost the entirety of his life developing a healthy respect for Faerghan winters. <i>Warm up, </i>then<i> ask questions.</i></p><p>	Bolt had left, he slowly realized. He was once again alone in the tent with Dedue, who was speaking soothingly to him. It was... mostly nonsense, from what he could tell. “I’m here,” and “you’re safe,” and “try not to bite your tongue” and he really was shivering that hard, wasn’t he? He could barely hold onto the blankets wrapped around him and over the coat.</p><p>	There were voices from outside, too. These were much less nonsense in intent (or so it seemed), but what was being said didn’t seem to make much sense either. Maybe he’d be able to understand it later.</p><p>	“Owl, can’t you warm yourself up?”</p><p>	“My magic doesn’t do ‘warm up.’ It does ‘set on fire.’ And unless you need another lit it’s going to do ‘jack shit’ while I crawl into a tent.”</p><p>	The tent flap opened again. Dimitri got only the slightest look at a raging fire someone had built before Bolt was shoving a cup of something gloriously warm in his hands.</p><p>	“Traveler’s tea,” Bolt explained, and he could try to figure out what exactly that was another time.</p><p>	He tried to drink it, but his teeth were still chattering and he ended up spilling most of it on the blankets. Enough of his got down, though, that he could feel the heat of it sliding down his throat and warming his belly.</p><p>	Bolt was already holding out a battered kettle to pour him another cup, Dedue helping to hold his hands still so their shaking didn’t spill it even more. After a few more cups and what felt like far too long of a time huddled under his pile of blankets, his shivering eased off. Even with that, however, he didn’t feel truly warm until the sun started to peek over the horizon. </p><p> </p><p>	Dimitri and Owl were both ordered to stay in the medical wagon for the day. Severe cold could have lingering effects, Sawbones claimed, and it was best if they rested where she could keep an eye on them. Owl had offered to use her magic to help Dimitri sleep, like she did for herself whenever she slept under the false floor in the equipment wagon, but he had refused. He wanted to be awake enough to respond if there was an emergency, even if it meant that the rocking and jostling of the cart stopped him from getting to sleep at all.</p><p>	Dedue was already used to walking alongside the medical wagon with the few friendly mercenaries; today’s march wouldn’t be much different from earlier ones. He didn’t need to worry about Happy’s group harassing Dimitri today, either, with the surgeon watching. And it was a good thing- many of the mercenaries were decidedly unhappy about being woken up in the middle of the night because, in the words of Cairn, “The dumbass nob went for a swim,” and if anyone was going to join Happy in her bullying, it was after an event like this.</p><p>	<i>After</i> Dimitri was allowed to march with the rest again was a different story. Dedue still wasn’t sure he was going to handle it. The company was already making up their own stories about what, exactly, had happened in the night, whether he was mad or confused or something worse. The most popular consensus was that Dimitri was possessed by some dark power and needed to be exorcised.</p><p>	(“I told you so!” shouted Fancy, the one who had claimed as such the first time Dimitri was caught sleepwalking.)</p><p>	“Wandering ghosts,” explained Songbird to Angler. “If people don’t get the proper rites, they can’t find their way to Seapmi. They wander the land forever, looking for the way down there. Sometimes they attach themselves to the living, so that when they can follow their host’s spirit when they die. Which they do quickly, in most cases- it’s a great burden on the body, carrying ghosts around.”</p><p>	“Ghosts don’t act like that, though,” Angler argued. “Why would they want to go <i>down?</i> That’s what they just escaped from!”</p><p>	“Why would anyone want to escape Seapmi? I won’t call it a paradise, but eternal rest is a lot better than the alternative.”</p><p>	“The underworld isn’t eternal rest- it’s eternal imprisonment! You wolves and your odd notions...”</p><p>	Two cuffed Angler on the shoulder. “Watch your tongue,” he snapped. To Songbird, he asked, “Can you exorcise him?”</p><p>	Songbird shook his head. “Never got that far in my apprenticeship. I barely learned the rites, even. I don’t know if it would work on a Faerghan, anyway- their patron god’s possessive and might take offense to me trying.”</p><p>	Two grunted. “Good point. Best not to offend the goddess of war when we’re marching to it.”</p><p>	“Best not to offend the goddess of war <i>at all.”</i></p><p>	No one ever said Sothis’ name out loud. In Fodlan, it was a way of respecting the Goddess. In Duscur, it was because names were thought to invoke the entities they belonged to. As Sothis was a war goddess there (and it could be argued in Fodlan as well, considering the constant spats they had with the neighboring countries), naming her would be invoking war itself. Foolishness even before the Tragedy and the subsequent Faerghan invasion of Duscur. An order of magnitude worse, after.</p><p>	The day passed mostly without incident, fortunately. The company went through two towns without encountering anything more serious than hurled slurs- Snap even managed to slip away and sell some of the jewelry from King’s Station, without being associated with them. The irrigation canal they’d been following ended, only for a new one, fed by a different river, to appear. This part of Faerghus was rich farmland and had a spotty rain season- keeping water near the fields was very important.</p><p>	Seará approached him during a rest and water break. “It’s hard to talk to you,” she said in Delazunsalla. It had been spoken primarily in the innermost reaches of Duscur, away from the border, but was similar enough to Dedue’s own Vairsalla to be mutually intelligible. “You’re usually surrounded by your posse.”</p><p>	Dedue blinked. “My what?” he asked, slipping into his native language. It had been a long time since he’d spoken it, outside of a few haphazard and generally unsuccessful attempts to teach it to Dimitri (he’d <i>tried</i> to learn, but the boy just did not have a head for languages), and the words were rusty on his tongue. But they were <i>there,</i> and that was the most important part.</p><p>	The girl raised an eyebrow at him. “Hunter, and then Four and Songbird. And now Bolt, too. They’ve been monopolizing you and Badger. I get that Hunter knew you from somewhere else, but I dunno what you did to get Four on your side. It took her ages to take a liking to me.” She plopped down on a maple stump just off the road. “Hope it’s not just that she thinks I’m a kid. You’re not <i>that</i> much older than me.”</p><p>	He hadn’t done much more than show protectiveness and a little vulnerability. Maybe part of it did have to do with age. Maybe she just thought Dedue was responsible. Asking would probably be rude.</p><p>	“The others don’t know what it’s like. Yeah, they had to flee Fhirdiad or their other homes, lost friends and family- the Church killed Happy’s brother, you know. They took his children away, to teach them to be Faerghan instead of Duscur, and he tried to get them back and they killed him for it. But they weren’t in Duscur when the Faerghans invaded. They didn’t see what the army did to the places they occupied.”</p><p>	Dedue knew very well what happened. Even if they weren’t directly ordered to slaughter the populace (which they often were), soldiers got bored. And bored soldiers were capable of doing horribly creative things to civilians under their control.</p><p>	He’d spent the past four years with those memories in a box, still present but unexamined and carefully locked away where they couldn’t influence what he said or did. It was too dangerous; the slightest indication he was upset would be taken as a threat against the prince. And until Dimitri became king, there was precious little he could do to prevent someone from... preemptively removing that threat, as it were. The regency council had made that clear every time Dimitri failed to pull rank as a mere prince.</p><p>	He did not want to talk about this subject. It was still far too soon to open that metaphorical box. He would wait until Dimitri had enough power to protect him from the baying hounds of the Faerghan court, and only then would he consider, <i>maybe,</i> starting to untangle the feelings he’d been suppressing since the invasion.</p><p>	Seará looked disheartened by his lack of response. He still didn’t want to talk about it. But he could deflect to something marginally less charged, and keep the focus on Seará’s side of the conversation. It felt like she needed to vent. “They don’t know what it’s like to live with the enemy, either,” he offered, sitting down next to her on the stump.</p><p>	The girl nodded. “I overheard Happy telling Bait that she’d never let that happen to her, that she’d just fight and fight and never obey. I tried to tell her that they’d have just killed her and made the next kid do her share of the work as well as theirs, but she seems convinced that she’d be able to get away. And it’s not...” She looked down. “I tried talking about this to the other trophy children, but they were too young. They’d already absorbed everything servant life taught them. I hope Hunter’s people can turn them Duscur again.”</p><p>	Fanning her hope would be unwise, but so too would crushing it. “Did Demise rescue many of them?”</p><p>	Seará shook her head. “If she knows they’re there, and if there’s an opportunity, but... Most nobles don’t parade their trophies around to just <i>anyone,</i> and especially not mere mercenaries. Fewer are arrogant enough to let ‘em out of sight- I had to jump out a window and chase down the company to get away. Broke my wrist in the process, but it was worth it.” She looked up at him. “How did you get away?”</p><p>	“A couple of nights ago I talked about the nephew of the head of the household-”</p><p>	“The one that got you weapon training, right?” Seará nodded. “Bolt told me.”</p><p>	“When he left the household to go to formal schooling, he was allowed to bring me. I...” Dedue sighed. “I probably would not have lasted long if I had been left alone there. I was not well liked.”</p><p>	It was one of the reasons Dimitri had insisted on naming Dedue as his retainer. There were too many people in the castle who despised the presence of a man of Duscur, even a subservient one. They wouldn’t even need to arrange an accident- Rufus’ administrators were already used to lying to Dimitri’s face. Lying in a letter would be <i>easy.</i></p><p>	“Is that why you said he saved your life?” Seará frowned at the look on his face. “Don’t give me that. Everyone already knows the ‘nephew’ is Badger.”</p><p>	“Yes,” Dedue lied. She didn’t need to know that Dimitri was the reason he was taken captive instead of killed. He allowed himself another truth. “He also snuck me food when they tried to starve me out of growing too large.”</p><p>	“They did that to my brother,” Seará admitted. “He didn’t...” She fell silent. “His name was Dáidu. He used to make whistles out of birch bark- Ma taught him how- and he’d pass them out at festivals for the other kids to play.”</p><p>	“In my village we’d use willow bark,” Dedue said. The baker had always been the one to make them, though. He’d tried to learn, but hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it.</p><p>	Seará gave him a tiny smile. “No willow trees in Haava. We barely had birch, even- just a few. Ma used to make bread from it, even when we didn’t need to. Said it was a good skill to have in case something happened to the deer.”</p><p>	“You were herders?”</p><p>	“Not very prestigious ones, but yeah.” She looked down. “They made us kill our reindeer. Said their army needed the meat, but I think they just wanted to punish us for trying to run away when we spotted them.”</p><p>	That had happened a lot during the invasion. Herders were made to slaughter their deer, farmers their livestock. Fisherman given quotas nigh-impossible to reach, and even if they made them at first, the depletion of fish stocks meant that the number caught would soon dwindle down to nothing. Even the most well-behaved armies consumed everything they came across, and the Faerghan army had been anything but well-behaved.</p><p>	As many as half of the deaths in Duscur had been from starvation. Dedue didn’t know the exact numbers- the regent hadn’t bothered keeping track. But he had seen the complaints by Viscount Kleiman about the inability of his new subjects to keep the fields planted and the mines worked, and he had seen the regency council actually consider sending aid in the interest of securing future tax revenue.</p><p>	(Dedue hadn’t had any illusions that the aid would have actually gone to the people instead of the coffers of Kleiman and his administrators, so he wasn’t particularly upset when they assigned the funds to securing the border with Sreng instead.)</p><p>	“Is that when you were taken captive?” he asked.</p><p>	Seará nodded. “Baron Necht said he deserved a reward for securing so many resources, so he took my brother and me to raise as servants. Everyone else was given to the soldiers for entertainment. Ma and my aunt lived a few days. My dad and my cousins didn’t.”</p><p>	Dedue looked over at her. While her tone had been steady and calm, her face was just <i>empty</i>. He knew that look all too well- he’d seen it in the mirror often enough. It came from being forbidden to show weakness, or present anything that could be interpreted as anger. Any emotion at all could be dangerous, if shown in front of the wrong person.</p><p>	The least he could do was show that he wasn’t so indoctrinated as to be that wrong person. He held out an arm for a hug; Seará more or less collapsed into it. “It’s not fair,” she muttered into his chest. “It’s not fair at all.”</p><p> </p><p>	Dimitri was only let out of the medical wagon for dinner (borscht- “the best thing to do with beets” so claimed Angler- and a small amount of mixed berry preserves on crispbread) and even then only under blankets and supervision both. The same went for Owl- in fact, Sawbones was insisting that she not stand watch at all that night and sleep instead. In a tent, with other heat-producing bodies, and not under the equipment wagon like the mage tried to suggest.</p><p>	“You’re joking, right? No one will take me,” the night guard protested. “I cast in my sleep.”</p><p>	One of the camp followers, Odette, immediately dropped the hand she had been slowly raising. “Is that why you got kicked out of the Guild of Dark Mages?”</p><p>	“Oh no, I was wide awake when I Miasma’d my boss in the face.”</p><p>	“Funny. When you told <i>me</i> what happened you said you pushed him out of a window,” said Cake.</p><p>	Owl flapped her hand dismissively. “Details.”</p><p>	“You don’t cast in your sleep, either. We would have noticed the damage to the wagon. What’s the real problem?”</p><p>	“If you’re a talker, that’s nothing,” Cairn chimed in. “Badger <i>screams,</i> and Bolt and Hunter haven’t strangled him yet.”</p><p>	Dimitri stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Glenn laughed. “It’s true,” he said. “Put that spoon down before someone sees. What kind of royalty are you?”</p><p>	“Not much of one,” he answered. Sawbones noticed, glanced over, then saw him starting to set his bowl aside. A glare later, and he was back to sipping at his broth. Both he and Owl had been given bowls with little substance and a lot of liquid- orders from the surgeon. His stomach wouldn’t want to handle solid pieces of food so soon after nearly freezing, she had said. Dimitri found that his stomach didn’t even want to handle the broth- he had no appetite at all.</p><p>	He’d missed part of the conversation during that exchange. Now Owl and Cake were arguing over the merits of the crawlspace under the equipment wagon. </p><p>	“There’s maybe a hand of space between the ceiling and your face. One of <i>your</i> hands. And that’s only way up near where the entry is,” argued Cake.</p><p>	“It’s cozy.”</p><p>	Sawbones groaned. “Look, if you like wagons so much, you can take my spot in the medical wagon. Soft hay as bedding, wooden wall, and Demise is a human furnace.”</p><p>	“It’s not my fault you have feet like ice,” Demise said.</p><p>	Dimitri turned to Four. “Why doesn’t Demise just order Owl to sleep in a tent?” he asked quietly.</p><p>	“You’re thinking too much like a nob and not enough like a merc,” she answered. “Mercenaries don’t like authority, and the folks here more so than most. Demise is our captain, yeah, but only because we let her be. She’s done good for us so far, but if she starts waving her status around without cause, there’s nothing stopping us from leaving and forming our own band.”</p><p>	Dimitri blinked. “Over sleeping situations?”</p><p>	“Just this? No,” said Hammer, on Dimitri’s other side. “But it’s never just one thing, when someone starts acting like a nob. First band I was with, the captain got it in his head that his mercenaries owed him for allowing us to work under him. In the end, half the group was trying to wrestle command from the other half. That was when Cake and Demise and I left.”</p><p>	At some point, the discussion between Owl, Sawbones, and Demise had turned into an argument between several of the other mercenaries about who would be night guard in Owl’s stead. The main consensus seemed to think that <i>someone else</i> should do it, up until Snap volunteered and the consensus changed to <i>someone else who wasn’t Snap.</i></p><p>	“She’s completely blind in that eye,” Four explained. “She volunteers for watch often enough that it’s almost a joke; she knows no one will actually let her do it. Same with Arsonist, but for a different reason; we can’t let Arsonist be unsupervised. His name is well-earned.”</p><p>	“Little fucker can light a fire in conditions no one else can,” said Hammer. “Proved it by lighting up a tent. In the middle of a snowstorm.”</p><p>	“And you kept him around?” asked Dimitri.</p><p>	“Little fucker can light a fire in conditions <i>no one else can,</i>” Hammer emphasized. “That’s valuable. And we did take the cost of the tent out of his pay.”</p><p>	“Owl can only use her magic so much if she wants to keep some left for guard duty,” explained Four.</p><p>	In the end, Cake volunteered. “All I really need to do is wake all of you up if I see something,” he said, shrugging. “There shouldn’t be anything out here worse than a wolf, anyway, and I can fight one of those off myself.”</p><p>	“Gif yer arm daesna faw aff again,” said Arsonist.</p><p>	Snap cleared her throat. “He says ‘If your arm doesn’t fall-’”</p><p>	“I think I got what he said. Arsonist: gaun fuck yer mither.”</p><p>	The laughter from Snap and much of the rest of the mercenaries around that particular campfire almost drowned out the protests from Arsonist (“Gross! She’s buin deid twal years!”) and neatly put an end to any arguments against Cake standing watch.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“At the heart of the debate of where a language ends and a dialect begins are the languages of Duscur, which number between three and five depending on who is doing the counting. The most fervent disagreements lie in the question of whether Soavisalla should be considered its own language, or merely a dialect of Vairsalla, with an actual fistfight breaking out at the Linguistic Society of Duscur last year between Dr. Uđđi Riva and Dr. Várvá Molinaro over it.”<br/>-All And Sundry Magazine</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Day Six</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which the fic earns it’s “Graphic Depictions Of Violence” tag.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sorry for the delay, y’all! Whumptober took a lot out of me.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Happy... wasn’t. This entire trip had been a massive try of her patience. First they picked up a stupid fucking nob and his trophy- she had <i>eyes,</i> she knew one when she saw one. That Anvil kept making excuses for the fucker just showed how brainwashed he’d been. It was honestly pretty pathetic, and he could use some help breaking out of it. If he didn’t, then in her opinion the only thing left to do was to just lock him in the wagon when they dropped the nob off at Fraldarius.</p><p>	Seeing that was bad enough, but now the stupid fucking nob wouldn’t shut up. She didn’t know who he thought he was talking to, only that they weren’t there and that he was probably a lunatic. At night, he screamed and pleaded with whoever the fuck was featuring in his dreams. And you know what? That, alone, would have been fine. Everyone had a bad story here, and more than a few people had noisy dreams. You just got used to ignoring everything outside of your own tent.</p><p>	Inside the tent was harder. Honestly, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Brice had left just so he’d be able to get some fucking <i>sleep.</i> But the night before last had been the final straw. Bad enough to deprive a few people of their night’s rest, but the entire camp?</p><p>	That was going to end, now.</p><p>	She didn’t want to <i>kill</i> him. That reward that Hammer thought she was so clever for hanging over their heads was, admittedly, a pretty convincing one. Happy wasn’t dumb enough to think Duke Fraldarius would pay up in cash; it was far more likely that Demise would instead take payment in better job conditions for whatever the Butcher would need them for (not that she liked the idea of working for the Butcher of Staskagona. But he paid his mercenaries, the company went through supplies too quickly to turn down good coin, and Cornelia was uncomfortably unpredictable).</p><p>	Regardless, it was unlikely that the Butcher would pay up if Badger was dead. So as much as she would have liked to take the little bastard out permanently, actually doing so would be an excellent way to get the rest of the company on her ass.</p><p>	Instead, she was just going to teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Ideally she’d have done it sooner, but he’d gone and gotten himself protection somehow. Hunter alone would have been easy to neutralize- he was new to the group, barely blooded, hadn’t had time to make friends yet- but Four and Songbird? Tricky. Four wasn’t especially social, but the people she <i>did</i> associate with would choose her over Happy every time, and the both of them had been in the company almost as long as Happy had and had had plenty of time to earn respect.</p><p>	Trying to distract them herself, or having a known friend do it, would only draw their attention to her. Luckily, she knew a few otherwise unassociated fellows who were also quite unhappy about Badger’s collective problems but <i>were</i> happy to do something about it. No one thought twice when Ophelia came over to tease Anvil about Seará‘s little display the previous day and rope Four into doing the same. Seará‘s frantic protests that no, she didn’t think of him that way, that it was a kin-crush not a romance-crush, were enough to get even more people interested in the going-ons.</p><p>	It wasn’t a coincidence at all that this happened right around when Badger had wandered into the woods alone.</p><p>	Happy glanced back to make sure Badger’s guardians were well and truly distracted -and that Demise was busy doing something else-, then stepped away from the path to follow the nob. Arsonist and Canny followed her. Ithga had wanted to go, but she needed him with the group being nice and visible. Too many of her people going missing at once would draw suspicions.</p><p>	“Maybe he’ll shut up if we sew his mouth shut,” Canny suggested under her breath. “I brought my kit- that should do the trick.”</p><p>	Equally quietly, Arsonist said something in that odd commoner language of his. It sounded like a ‘no,’ but with stuff wrapped around it.</p><p>	“Arsonist is right,” Happy whispered. “He has a martial Crest- we should stay out of arm’s range. He broke Bait’s nose while numbed up, he’ll do a lot worse now. If we can get his arms pinned, sure, but in the meantime...” She nodded at Canny’s sidearm, a battered mace. Too risky to hit him with normally, but the shaft would work as a bludgeon.</p><p>	The three of them quieted down after that. Best if their quarry didn’t hear them coming. One of the other reasons she didn’t bring Ithga along was that he was about as stealthy as a charging wolf. But she and Canny had been hunters, once, and for all his other faults Arsonist was a skilled skirmisher. They knew how to walk silently through the woods.</p><p>	They found Badger digging a latrine near a thorn bush, which was really too good of an opportunity to let go. Happy gestured at the nob, then at the bush, then motioned at Canny to go give him a push.</p><p>	That was when a hand grabbed Happy by the ear and twisted it painfully. “Now, I really can’t think of a reasonable excuse for what I’m seeing here, but I’ve been surprised before,” said Cake’s voice from behind her. What was he doing here? He was supposed to be asleep! Standing watch all night should have been exhausting! “Go on, let’s see what bullshit you can come up with.”</p><p>	Badger startled at the sudden noise, glanced up, then scurried backward in a way that would have been amusing if Cake wasn’t twisting her ear off.</p><p>	“It was her idea,” Canny said, and of fucking course she would throw her to the metaphorical wolves here.</p><p>	Cake let go of Happy’s ear, only to turn her around and shove her back in the direction of the road. “Back to the company, you three; let the man shit in peace. If you’re lucky, Demise will be able to take care of you. If you’re not, <i>Sawbones</i> will.”</p><p>	She hadn’t a clue what it was that Arsonist said, but he sounded nervous. She had to agree; Sawbones could get damn well terrifying if her patients were threatened.</p><p> </p><p>	It was getting close to evening when they found the trail of a monster. The paw prints were as wide as Dedue’s head, dotted haphazardly around and across the road. Off the road to the south, blood pooled around a swath of churned and torn earth. Further splats of blood dripped in a trail across the road and into the woods to the north.</p><p>	“Giant wolf, badly wounded,” said Cairn, their scout for the day. “See the drag marks? It can’t use one of its hinds.”</p><p>	“It’s young,” said Hunter, kneeling down to touch one of the tracks. “A puppy, really. It can’t be any larger than Felix there. Easy prey should we go for the bounty.”</p><p>	“What wounded it?” asked Dedue, after taking a second to re-associate “Felix” with the massive warhorse he’d given the company.</p><p>	“Considering the amount of blood, another monster,” said the scout. “A giant bird, more specifically. These marks here are messy, but they still look like wing prints to me. You see littler ones sometimes when a hawk takes a rabbit. If I had to guess...” She walked Felix to the center of the chaos, where the most blood was. “A bird swooped down, tried to pick it up, dropped it. The wolf broke its leg in the fall. It fled-” She pointed off into the woods. “-to where it could get cover from further attacks.”</p><p>	“How far could it have gotten?” asked Demise.</p><p>	“Not far,” said Hunter and Cairn at the same time. The latter continued. “It’s down a leg, missing a lot of blood, and these tracks are fresh. Going by the state of the blood splatter, less than an hour old. We could probably track it down in another hour, since it left a nice wide trail to follow.”</p><p>	Demise nodded. “Anvil, Seará, you’re with me. We’re blooding you today. I need six volunteers-”</p><p>	A number of mercenaries raised their hands.</p><p>	“-Snap, Blondie, Bait, Fancy, Cairn, and Two- you’re in. Gambeson and chain, light crossbows and barbed bolts.”</p><p>	“Everyone else, get your crossbows cocked and armed in case that bird comes back. Windlass bows. Chase it off if you can’t kill it, just don’t let it attack the wagons. Hammer, you’re in charge while I’m gone.”</p><p>	Dedue shook his head. “Considering what happened earlier, I’m not comfortable leaving Badger alone with Happy and her crew.” That was putting it lightly. Hearing what had almost happened that morning had made him determined not to leave his liege’s side at all. If Cake hadn’t gotten suspicious and followed them, or if he’d taken Owl’s offer to sedate him for the day...</p><p>	“First, he won’t be alone. Cake and Hammer are here to keep an eye on him. Second, we can’t take him with us,” Demise said. “Sawbones hasn’t cleared him for combat yet. And I want you blooded before we reach Fraldarius territory.”</p><p>	“You know recruiting me won’t work.”</p><p>	“I won’t say no if it does, but that’s not why. Our people aren’t exactly welcome in Fraldarius territory. If everything goes badly for you there and you need to leave quick, it’ll be easier to shelter you if we can claim a prior connection. That means blooding.”</p><p>	Dedue crossed his arms and strove to look as immobile as possible. While that argument would have possibly worked for anyone else, Dedue knew that Duke Fraldarius wasn’t going to harm him. He wasn’t as confident as Dimitri was that the man actually <i>liked</i> him, but at the very least Rodrigue understood how important he was to Dimitri.</p><p>	Four spoke up. “Songbird and I will stay with Badger for you. Happy won’t risk harming a shaman.”</p><p>	Songbird muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Apprentice!” but for a group like this the difference was as good as moot. Shamans were important for groups with such a high risk of death, and even one in training was far better than none at all.</p><p>	“Go on,” said Hunter. Quietly, he added, “You have more allies here than you know. Going along with Demise’s plan might get you some more.”</p><p>	Dedue sighed. He was going to regret this... “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go grab some armor.”</p><p> </p><p>	The clearing appeared to have been formed solely by the pained thrashing of the giant wolf- branches snapped, bushes crushed, saplings broken off at the trunk to lay across their neighbors. Laying against an enormous oak was the giant wolf, disemboweled and thoroughly dead. Standing over it, busy ripping the flesh from its belly, was a demonic beast.</p><p>	It was a large beast, easily five times the size of the wolf it was devouring. Its massive wings curved around the carcass of its prey as if to shield it from rival predators. Most damning of all was the creature’s head- eyeless and blind, and decorated with the remains of a brass mask. This was no wild demonic beast, but a tamed Imperial monster. Whether it had killed its handler or merely escaped was irrelevant- a beast like this would already have experience attacking and killing enemy soldiers. It would not be chased away by a mere show of weapons.</p><p>	Demise shook her head and gestured at them to turn back, but before they could start to move, the monster raised its head and sniffed the air. Slowly its great head swept from side to side, until it centered on them. With a boneshaking growl, the demonic beast lunged forward, vaulting over the dead wolf with its wings. The company dashed behind the largest of the trees, barely making it before the demonic beast smashed into them. Unable to break through the thick trunks, it shrieked in rage, showering the group with saliva and bits of carrion, then flapped its wings and took to the sky.</p><p>	Demise glanced around at everyone to make sure their crossbows were still locked and armed, then looked up at the rising beast. “We can’t let it attack the wagons,” she said.</p><p>	“We can’t win this fight,” said Blondie, following her gaze. “Not with just the nine of us. Maybe not even with the full band.”</p><p>	Demise nodded grimly. “We can’t,” she agreed. “But we can keep its attention until they can get away. If we can take out its wings, we might even be able to get away ourselves. Can you hit it from here?”</p><p>	“Of course I can.”</p><p>	“I’ll signal the others to flee. Form up everyone!” she ordered. “Get in the clearing, make sure it sees you. When it dives, scatter and skirmish. I don’t trust it to pull up before it crushes us. Aim for the wings!”</p><p>	There wasn’t any hesitation in the veteran mercenaries. Doomed, they might be, but they would go out fighting well. “Shoot it now!” Demise demanded. Then she raised her hunting horn to her lips and blew.</p><p>	It was a two-tone call, one high and one low- the call normally used for wildfires and other emergencies. Above them, the demonic beast startled, ‘looking’ down at them. When the crossbow bolt struck home, it let out a shriek and dived.</p><p>	The mercenaries also dived, aiming to get behind some form of cover before the beast could land. Dedue’s training with the group had been mostly about spear formations rather than skirmishing, but he knew the basics. Stay in pairs behind cover, coming out only to attack. Keep the beast from focusing on a single target. Giant wolves only had one dangerous end, and if the band could keep it constantly turning around to face a new threat, they could prevent it from charging at the soldiers harrying it.</p><p>	The demonic beast crashed into the ground right where they would have been had they stayed in formation, its eyeless head whipping from side to side as it tried to track them by scent. With a low growl, it wheeled on Cairn and Blondie, bashing its head into the tree trunk they were hiding behind. The two of them reached around the tree to jab at its jaw with their spears, Cairn’s halberd slicing a minuscule gash under its canines. </p><p>	Dedue and the other mercenaries loosed their bolts at the creature, poking holes in its wings that seemed far too small compared to their size. The demonic beast screamed and whirled around, searching for an easy target. Finding none, it instead charged at the first pair it noticed. Bait managed to get back behind the boulder in time. Snap didn’t.</p><p>	With a lightning-quick snap of its jaws, it took the former bandit in its mouth and shook her like a dog shaking a rat. On the fourth shake, her lower body came free and flew across the clearing, showering Seará and Demise with blood and entrails.</p><p>	Seará screamed. So did the demonic beast. With a couple of laborious flaps of its wings, it took to the air again. For just a moment, there was silence only broken by the girl retching up the remains of that morning’s breakfast.</p><p>	“Well?” Demise shouted. “Span your bows again! Bring it down!”</p><p> </p><p>	Waiting for a giant bird was intensely boring. For the most part, everyone just sat and chatted with each other, or busied themselves with regular camp work. True to her word, Four and Songbird were sticking to Dimitri like glue. Neither would let him out of their sight, which seemed like it should be comforting but mostly just reminded him how much danger he’d be in if they <i>weren’t.</i></p><p>	Dimitri’s father scoffed at him. “Pathetic. Are you really so weak that you can’t fight off three bullies?”</p><p>	“I’m not better yet,” he answered. He was slowly putting on mass, yes, but a few days of mercenary rations couldn’t make up for months of half-starvation.</p><p>	“Then try harder!” snapped Glenn. “You’ll hardly be able to kill the Emperor in this state! Do you even <i>want</i> to put us to rest?”</p><p>	“Glenn, I swear I’m trying the best I can! I just-”</p><p>	Four squeezed his hand, but Dimitri barely felt it over the wash of cold that went through him as his father grabbed him by the chin. “Your best clearly isn’t good enough,” the ghost whispered in his ear.</p><p>	A hellish shriek split the air.</p><p>	“Oh look,” said Glenn as the mercenaries turned to look in the direction of the noise, several reaching for their crossbows. “Something else for you to fail at.”</p><p>	In the distance, a demonic beast rose from the forest on massive wings.</p><p>	“That’s no bird!” Hunter shouted as the camp sprang into action, rushing to put supplies back on the wagons and hitch the horses up. A bird could be driven off. A beast couldn’t. A beast could only be fled from.</p><p>	Then the sound of Demise’s hunting horn rang out, the beast dived into the woods, and the commotion turned into a full-on panic. The emergency call meant to run, <i>now,</i> but it was hard to run when the camp was hunkered down for a possible fight instead of ready to get moving immediately. Sawbones began organizing the panic, directing the camp followers to the tasks that were the most urgent and directing the mercenaries to Hammer.</p><p>	Hammer, for her part, seemed to have a very different idea for what “run now!” meant than everyone else. “I need volunteers!” she called out. “Actual volunteers, not obligatory ones. If you don’t want to fight that thing, and I don’t blame you, the wagons will need guards. I’m going to go pull the others out of the fire.”</p><p>	The commotion somehow worsened. Plenty of mercenaries were eager to go on a rescue mission, but plenty of others were very unhappy that Hammer was blatantly ignoring Demise’s instructions to go on a suicide mission.</p><p>	Dimitri took advantage of this to slip away from Four and Songbird.</p><p>	Felix the horse was still saddled, despite Cairn being off on foot with the hunting party. And everyone else so busy enough grabbing supplies from the equipment wagon or shouting at Hammer that no one seemed to notice when Dimitri went over and selected a lance, a small crossbow- all the large ones had already been taken- and a javelin. Some of them did notice when he started tying his crossbow down to one of the horse’s saddlebags. <i>All</i> of them noticed when he hopped on the warhorse’s back and started galloping in the direction of the demonic beast, the horse- trained specifically for rough terrain- easily keeping Dimitri stable on its back even as it charged through brush and ducked around trees.</p><p>	He ignored the yells and demands that he get back here right now. There was a very important thing that the mercenaries didn’t know. Wild demonic beasts were just big angry monsters that fought with tooth and claw. They didn’t really have any special powers. They barely had any shielding. They didn’t breathe fire.</p><p>	Imperial demonic beasts <i>did.</i> </p><p>	It wasn’t long before the demonic beast rose out of the woods again. Through the canopy, Dimitri could see the beast’s mouth open and the fireball start to form. It would set the entire forest ablaze, and that would be it for the hunting party. That would be it for Dedue.</p><p>	He gripped his javelin tightly, swung his arm back, and <i>threw.</i> He felt his Crest flare into being as the javelin left his hand traveling at a much faster speed than any normal human could manage. The javelin flew up and up and up...</p><p>	It struck the demonic beast right in the throat. The creature let out a horrible hacking cough, the fireball dissipating. It turned its head towards him, let out a screech that would have been deafening had he been closer to it, then started to fly towards him.</p><p>	A volley of bolts struck the beast in one of its wings, shredding it. The monster’s charge turned into a crash landing in the woods. Dimitri brought Felix to a stop, stepped down from his saddle, and started freeing the crossbow from it. The shouting from behind him suggested that the others weren’t far behind, or at the very least that someone had taken the other scout horse and followed him on it. He ignored them. He had to find Demise’s group and help them take out that monster. The beast’s landing spot would have to do as a rendezvous point.</p><p>	He could hear the monster’s thrashing as it tried to right itself and find what was threatening it, the crash of smaller trees as they were torn down and fell, only to be caught by the larger trees around them. Dimitri would have to keep an eye out in case they came free- he had no interest in having one land on him.</p><p>	He found the demonic beast’s makeshift clearing at the same time the others did. “You damned fool!” Hammer shouted at him over Demise shouting the same thing at <i>her.</i> “You’re in no condition to fight! Now get behind cover and stay there until this is over.”</p><p>	Getting behind cover seemed like a good idea regardless, seeing as the demonic beast had finally noticed their presence, so Dimitri made tracks for the closest tree, an aspen whose trunk was as thick as his arm was long.</p><p>	“Not <i>you!</i>” Happy snapped at him as he joined her behind the tree.</p><p>	Dimitri had the same opinion, but was too busy leaning out to shoot at the beast (only landing a glancing blow, unfortunately) to say so. At least she seemed more interested in fighting for her life than in harassing him. Her own bolt was much more effective, striking the beast in the side.</p><p>	The demonic beast’s tail smashed into the trunk, shaking it and showering them with leaves and branches. Happy let out a long line of invective in the Duscur tongue as she attached the windlass to her crossbow and started winding.</p><p>	Dimitri spanned his own, smaller crossbow, and leaned out to loose the bolt into the beast’s hock. It screamed, kicking back at him. Its claws narrowly avoided slashing his belly open.</p><p>	The furious swearing at his side suddenly shifted into the trade tongue. “Son of a whore! The shitlicker who last used this thing’s getting my foot up his ass!” Happy declared, dropping the windlass. “The rope broke! This thing’s useless!” She let the crossbow fall to the ground and snatched up her halberd. With one more string of invective, she dashed out from behind the tree to jab at its flailing tail, then dashed back as it spun around to try to bite at them.</p><p>	Dimitri looked down at the discarded crossbow. It took at least three times the draw strength as his smaller one, if he remembered right. But he’d managed the smaller one with just one arm. Could he draw the bigger one, if he used both?</p><p>	The demonic beast crouched as if about to try to take off despite being down a wing, only to take three bolts through its good wing and two pikes through its feet. With a growl, it kicked out at the latter threat, knocking both Dedue and Cairn back into a spruce. Its tail swept to the side and smashed Blondie against the aspen across from Dimitri’s.</p><p>	Dimitri spanned his crossbow, then handed it to Happy to shoot- she took it without question, possibly having assumed he just considered her the better bowman. Then he reached down and picked up the larger one. He stuck his foot in the loop at its tip to better brace it, then reached down with both hands, took the string, and pulled.</p><p>	The Crest of Blaiddyd was finicky. It never seemed to work when it was really needed, and the great strength it provided was uncontrolled. He’d broken more sets of cutlery than he cared to admit, and Felix <i>still</i> hadn’t forgiven him for snapping his sword in half just minutes after receiving it as a birthday present. Furthermore, he’d already used it once earlier today. Asking for it to activate again seemed like it would be pushing things.</p><p>	It was a relief when, after straining at the bowstring until his muscles screamed, it finally deigned to move. His Crest <i>blazed</i> like fire running through his veins, filling his tired, thin arms with strength as he pulled the bowstring up inch by inch. After what felt like an eternity, it finally rested on the lock.</p><p>	He peeked around the tree at the demonic beast, by now so full of spears and crossbow bolts that it almost resembled a hedgehog. Its wings were in tatters, leaving it unable to fly, but it was otherwise unconcerned with its injuries- demonic beast hide was tough, and what could pierce through it couldn’t go very far. It had cornered a skirmisher- Bolt- and was trying to get past the ranseur piercing the top of its mouth to savage her. Several of its teeth had already slashed up and down one of the arms holding onto her polearm just by trying to reach her.</p><p>	His bolt pierced the beast in the back of the head. It still wasn’t dead. It was distracted, yes, turning to ram into the tree he and Happy were using for cover and throwing Bolt in the process. She cried out as she landed on her shredded arm.</p><p>	The next bolt was easier, as was the one after that. On the fourth, the bowstring snapped, whipping back to slash a gouge into his arm. But by then, the beast was finally slowing down. The combined efforts of the company had sapped most of its strength. Seeing the demonic beast stagger gave the company the impetus to fight even more fiercely, and with a final round of blows from bolts and spears alike it collapsed to the ground, wisps of dark magic breaking free as it began disintegrating.</p><p>	Everyone stopped just to breathe for a moment, some people slumping to the ground in exhaustion, others just leaning against the nearest sturdy object. Sawbones materialized from the woods, holding Felix the horse’s lead. Several of the wounded started to stagger in her direction.</p><p>	Demise patted Seará on the shoulder. “You held firm and didn’t flee,” she said. “You did good, Red.” Turning to the slowly assembling mercenaries, she raised her voice. “Casualty count!” she shouted. “Who’s hurt and how bad?”</p><p>	“Snap’s dead,” said Bait (and come to think of it, Dimitri hadn’t seen her with the group). “So’s Blondie.” Dimitri looked over at the stricken man. His chest was caved in; not even landing right in front of healer could have saved him.</p><p>	“My arm’s fucked,” called Bolt. “Might be able to save it, might not.” The rest of the mercenaries joined in, tallying up bruises, cuts, and broken bones. Cairn had a concussion bad enough for Sawbones to conscript someone to keep an eye on her (she kept asking where Blondie was, even as Two kept trying to explain it to her). Mute had taken a piece of shrapnel from a shattered spear through the cheek and a couple of teeth and was having even more trouble than usual talking. Dimitri had an open wound on his arm, but he couldn’t focus on that right now.</p><p>	Not with Dedue slumped against a tree, breathing harshly. </p><p>	Dimitri rushed to his side and crouched down. Dedue’s hands were tightly covering his belly, dark red blood welling up between his fingers through a long slash in his chainmail. Dimitri gently tugged them away, then pulled the knife from his friend’s belt and started cutting away the layers of linen in his gambeson. “I’m sorry, Dedue, but we can’t treat you otherwise,” he whispered as his friend groaned in pain.</p><p>	“Anvil’s hurt!” someone- Songbird, he thought- shouted as he finally reached the end of the blood-soaked armor.</p><p>	Wet, bloody loops of intestines were peeking out of a long gash in Dedue’s belly. For a second he thought he could see straight into his friend’s abdomen, but that was a silly thought- there were too many guts in the way. “Sawbones, help!” he called. “Dedue- Anvil’s been gutted!”</p><p>	Someone cursed. Dimitri felt himself being tugged away from Dedue so the surgeon could take his place. “Happy, there are three vulneraries in Felix’s saddlebags. Give one to Cairn and bring me another. Hurry!” she called. Then, with grim determination in her face, she began feeding Dedue’s intestines back into his body. “This part’s intact,” she muttered to herself. “So is this. This isn’t...”</p><p>	She snatched a vulnerary right from Happy’s hand, then uncorked it and poured part of it onto her fingers before dripping it directly onto the torn bowel in front of her.</p><p>	Intestines were hard to heal. Dimitri remembered that much from a frankly horrifying demonstration of Mercedes’ on a plate of pasta at dinnertime. They tended to bind together in odd and often horrific ways. Just swallowing a vulnerary could keep a stricken soldier fighting for a time, but would inevitably lead to wounds fusing together in a way that required magical healing to fix. Ensuring the medicine only reached one wound at a time must be the best way to prevent that from happening.</p><p>	“Is he going to live?” Dimitri asked. He hated how weak his voice sounded.</p><p>	Sawbones never lied. “I don’t know,” she said. “If it doesn’t fester, and there aren’t any worse injuries underneath, then maybe. But if it does... I can’t fix sepsis. No surgeon can. Only magical healing can prevent it from happening.”</p><p>	“Are there any magical healers we can go to?”</p><p>	He knew the answer even before Sawbones shook her head. “None that will treat a man of Duscur. We tried once to <i>make</i> someone heal, and well. There are a lot of ways to kill with healing.” </p><p>	When she was done, she pinched the gash closed and poured half of the remaining vulnerary directly on the wound. “Anvil, can you swallow?” she asked.</p><p>	Dedue looked like he was going into shock, but he managed to nod regardless. Sawbones took the rest of the bottle and tipped it into his mouth. “That’s as much as I can do. Badger, Hunter, keep an eye on him. Bolt! Let me see your arm!”</p><p> </p><p>	They held a wake for Snap and Blondie that night. Duscur wakes were somber affairs. No one told stories of grand battles or unusual missions. Instead, all that was mentioned were little things. Personal things. Blondie used to craft tiny boats out of fallen leaves. He’d set them floating on ponds and rivers with seed pods as their cargo. Snap never told the same tale twice about how she’d been blinded in that eye, though bears seemed to feature prominently in many of them. She also once apologized to a magpie whose nest she’d accidentally knocked down by giving it a bead necklace to put in its next nest. Blondie used to have a dog in Duscur, and had named it Násttáš.</p><p>	“It means “little star,”” Four explained to Dimitri.</p><p>	Arsonist had carried what remained of Snap’s body out of the forest himself, and refused to leave it. “A need tae stey wi her,” was all he’d say whenever someone tried to coax him over to one of the cooking fires. Cake eventually brought him a bowl of turnip stew and sat down to keep him company.</p><p>	Cairn barely spoke at all, except to Songbird, and even then it was hardly more than a whisper. She spent most of the time staring into the fire. Dimitri could imagine what she was going through. She did not accept company; Fancy tried, but Cairn just glared and scooted away.</p><p>	The stories ran dry after a while, and when that happened, Songbird stood up and began singing a low and somber tune in the Duscur tongue. It seemed to echo across the field they were squatting in, seeping into the background noise of the night only to come back to their little group.</p><p>	After the song came to an end, Sawbones slipped away from the group and started walking back down the road.</p><p> </p><p>	Demise stood guard over the dead woman’s body, staring down at the artifact embedded in her chest. Most of the troops hadn’t seen it- the corpse had mostly been covered by gore from things the demonic beast had eaten- and she wasn’t keen on letting them know about this particular development. It was bad enough with them muttering about curses and ill luck.</p><p>	She waved Sawbones over as the other woman approached. “I knew her,” she said without preamble. “We used to stop at her tavern in King’s Hill. To see her like this...”</p><p>	Sawbones prodded the artifact with a stick. “Stuck in there pretty hard,” she said. “You said you saw the beast turn into her?”</p><p>	Demise nodded. “She just kind of fell out when it was disintegrating.” She didn’t like how this was adding up. “Two entire towns are stripped of people,” she said to Sawbones as Owl hurried over from the camp. “Mass-produced conscription notices go out, enough of them to affect how well the towns can function. If people can turn into these things...”</p><p>	“You think someone used <i>all</i> those people to make demonic beasts?” asked Sawbones, aghast.</p><p>	“I hope not. One crippled our company. An army’s worth...” She picked up the remains of the mask the creature had been wearing. “Owl, what do you make of this?”</p><p>	The dark mage peered at it, then swore and took off her own mask to get a better look. Demise averted her gaze from the scarred, deathly-pale face underneath; Owl hated it when people saw her face, so it was only polite to look away on the rare occasion she had to expose it. “Umbral steel plated with... I think brass and Agarthium. Brass and Agarthium conduct magic well, but I think the steel’s just for protection.”</p><p>	“Can you tell what kind of magic it was for?”</p><p>	“It reeks of dark magic, but that doesn’t mean much. Everything that stays near dark magic for long enough eventually stinks of the stuff.” She knelt down by the body and rested a hand on the artifact.</p><p>	Sawbones jerked back, swearing up a storm. “What are you <i>doing,</i>” she hissed. “What if it transforms you too?”</p><p>	Owl ignored her. “Yeah, the same magic in the artifact is in the mask,” she said. “If I had to guess... the mask either lets whoever did this control the transformation, or it lets them control the beast. If it’s the latter, then the mask may have broken and let it run away from its captors.”</p><p>	“Get away from that damned thing!” Sawbones snapped.</p><p>	Owl relented, standing up and dusting her hands off before putting her mask back on. “That’s all I can tell you, I’m afraid.”</p><p>	“Guild of Dark Mages never got up to anything like this?” asked Demise.</p><p>	The mage shrugged. “Not in my department, at least. I worked with... I’m not sure how to say it in the trade tongue. “Titany” are what we called them. They weren’t things that could get loose and run rampant like this.”</p><p>	“It’s irrelevant, then,” Sawbones said. “So, what are we going to do with this?”</p><p>	Demise shrugged. “Give her a burial, bring Songbird around to sing for her, and then move on. Don’t pick fights with any more demonic beasts, but be aware that there are probably more out there.” She sighed. “If there’s an army’s worth of them, we may well be better off making for Sreng instead of sticking around to fight.”</p><p>	The other two nodded their agreement. Demonic beasts were nothing to take lightly. Today had certainly proven that.</p><p> </p><p>	By the next morning, Dedue had developed a fever.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“The oldest known demonic beast died in captivity yesterday of apparent heart failure. Known as “Sweet Mary,” this beast has been a source of controversy ever since her placement in North Derdriu Zoo in 1486, with many people claiming that she should have been cured of her affliction instead of placed on display. The zoo has historically defended its position by citing the living will of the woman Sweet Mary used to be (Mary Edwards, also known for being the last known bearer of the Crest of Maurice), which specifically said not to attempt to fix her.</p><p>There will be a funeral held at the North Derdriu Zoo on...”<br/>-Excerpt from an article in the Derdriu Times: 24th Red Wolf Moon, 1719</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Days Seven and Eight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A plan is hatched and enacted.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Only one more chapter left, y’all!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dedue was in a lot of pain. He resisted anyone trying to touch his belly, batting Sawbone’s hand aside. Dimitri caught a frown on the woman’s face as she slowly pressed a hand against his abdomen, then quickly drew it back. Dedue’s gasp seemed to be all the confirmation she needed.</p><p>	“Fester,” Sawbones said, shaking her head. “There’s nothing we can do now but make him comfortable. I’ll mix him something to make it fast and painless.”</p><p>	That couldn’t be what it sounded like. “No,” Dimitri whispered.</p><p>	“I’m not going to give it to him until he asks for it,” she clarified. “But they all do eventually. It’s no good end, cooking your brain with fever.”</p><p>	“Shame. He probably would have made it if you’d been a little faster,” said his father.</p><p>	“You think I don’t know that?” he said to the ghost. To Sawbones, he said, “Will magical healing help him?”</p><p>	“We went over this yesterday,” said the surgeon. “No one will treat him. Besides, all of the faith mages will have been conscripted for the war.”</p><p>	“That’s not what I’m asking.”</p><p>	She sighed. “Yes, a healer could help. Magic can’t get rid of the fester, but it can fix the damage it causes and keep him alive until he can recover from it on his own.”</p><p>	“It’ll just kill him slowly instead,” said Glenn.</p><p>	“The company’s going to the front lines anyway. There’ll have to be a mage that can help there,” Dimitri said.</p><p>	“I’ve said this twice already. There isn’t a faith mage in Faerghus that will heal someone from Duscur.”</p><p>	“They will if I ask them to,” he said.</p><p>	“Because you’re the Duke’s son?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>	He could say yes. Rodrigue had a lot of power. It was believable that his heir would be able to command loyalty from even the most stubborn healer. Or at least it would be if it wasn’t public knowledge that Felix was too prickly to command any loyalty.</p><p>	“No,” Dimitri said finally, looking over at his father. “Because I’m the king’s.”</p><p> </p><p>	There was a lot of shouting coming from the medical wagon. Badger and Sawbones having a disagreement, it sounded like. Probably about Anvil.</p><p>	Demise didn’t like losing people. Her troops were as good as her family, even the shitheads. Snap had been an especially hard loss; she’d spent most of her life fighting in one way or another and that alone put her skills above the former merchants and craftsmen that made up most of her company. Blondie had been well-liked by most of the company and was skilled at settling disputes in a way that let both parties keep their pride. They’d both been buried the previous night, what was left of them, and while Cairn seemed to have finally found some closure, Arsonist was inconsolable.</p><p>	And now it looked like they were going to lose someone else. Anvil hadn’t been in the company long, but he’d managed to get blooded before getting gutted, so he was as good as hers as far as she was concerned. She’d get the full story later, but she guessed that Anvil was already as good as dead. There wouldn’t be so much arguing if he was healing well.</p><p>	The least she could do was make sure he got a proper sendoff. It would be better if they had a full shaman in the company, but Songbird was unfortunately well-practiced at singing the funeral rites by now. She wished it wouldn’t have to be so soon after this last time, but that was just how things worked sometimes. She’d have to make sure to get Badger to tell Songbird Anvil’s full name- she didn’t think a Faerghan would realize it was needed.</p><p>	After a good while, Sawbones hopped down from the wagon and stomped over to her. “We have to get moving,” she said through gritted teeth. “Go talk to Badger. Ask him about his Crest.”</p><p>	Then she was pacing through the camp, shouting at the mercenaries to hurry up and start packing. Which they did, albeit with a quick glance Demise’s way just in case. Better to get a move on, anyway. The road wouldn’t stay empty forever, and half their camp was right on it. Eventually, someone would come by and take offense to that, and she didn’t want trouble when half her troops couldn’t fight. She was still mad at Hammer for going back for her, but she supposed two dead and fourteen bad injuries was better than nine dead. Better still than <i>everyone</i> dead. Fire could spread horribly quickly through woodland.</p><p>	Demise hopped up onto the medical wagon. Three people plus all of the fodder, firewood, and medical supplies made it a tight fit, but if Sawbones could manage so could she. “So, what’s going on?” she asked.</p><p>	Badger looked like shit, and he wasn’t even the one that had been gutted. Anvil looked even worse. “Sawbones didn’t explain?”</p><p>	“If she did, I wouldn’t be here; she just said to talk to you.” Which was a little annoying, to be completely honest.</p><p>	Badger took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Duke Fraldarius will have healers on the front lines. I can convince them to heal Dedue, and maybe others too though I’m less certain of that.”</p><p>	“Because you’re the Duke’s son.” Made sense enough.</p><p>	Badger groaned and pinched the brow of his nose. “I seem to be getting that a lot today. Just... look.”</p><p>	He held up his palm and called a glowing symbol into being. Demise blinked at it. Well sure, that was his Crest. He’d used it a lot the previous day, though she had been too busy to get a good look at it. All of them had. It was oddly familiar, in the subtle way of something seen a lot, but never really paid attention to. Familiar in the same way a cartwheel was familiar. Demise stared at it, trying to place where exactly-</p><p>	It was the same symbol on the flag of Faerghus. </p><p>	Badger, apparently having seen the expression on her face, let it fade into nothing. Demise wasn’t sure what to think about this. The Demon Prince was <i>dead,</i> and dead people didn’t tend to do things like sit next to a dying man and wipe the sweat off his brow. Neither did demons in human guise, for that matter. The most likely explanation was that Badger was one of the Regent’s bastard children, or at least it would be if that made any sense whatsoever. Rufus had never legitimized any of his children. None of them would be in any position to have a Duscur servant, much less become close enough to one to run into battle for him.</p><p>	The other explanation, that Cornelia had faked the prince’s execution to preserve her own reputation, was unfortunately realistic. Nobles lied as easily as they breathed, especially to the common folk.</p><p>	“This can’t get out to anyone,” Demise said after a few seconds.</p><p>	Badger nodded.</p><p>	“I need to talk this out with Cake and Hammer. Yell for Sawbones if something changes here.”</p><p>	A few minutes later, she stepped out of Hammer’s tent and started banging on a pot lid. “Everyone gather up!” she called out. Most of the mercenaries stopped packing up the camp. Those who didn’t, well, they could get the news from their buddies.</p><p>	“I fucked up,” Demise continued as soon as she had their attention. “Half of us are too injured to fight, three likely permanently, two are dead and another is dying. One demonic beast did this to us, and it’s all because I decided to detour to take out a wolf.”</p><p>	There wasn’t an easy way to say this. “We are in no condition to hire out for a war. It will be a few months <i>at best</i> before we’re in fighting condition again. So, we’re not going to try. We’re turning back. Those who can fight and still want to, Hammer, Sawbones, and Cake are keeping the group going. They’re going south, out of the way of the war, and are going to focus on bandits and monster bounties like we usually do. In a year’s time, they’ll swing back around to pick up anyone who wants to join up again.”</p><p>	“Those who can’t fight or who want to retire, you have three options. Hunter’s village can take up to ten people- he’ll lead you there. You can go to King’s Hill and join up with Brice and his kin. You know, the emptied town. Or you can go to the Fhirdiad slums. As for me...”</p><p>	“Sawbones thinks we can get the Butcher to save Anvil.” A bark of disbelieving laughter rang out. “I know. But I’m the one that fucked up enough that he needs it, so I’m going with them. I’m not taking anyone else with me.”</p><p> </p><p>	“I could have sworn I said I wasn’t taking anyone else with me,” Demise grumbled as they waited for Angler to return from his scouting mission. It took time they didn’t have- fester could worsen very quickly- but it wouldn’t help Anvil at all if the group walked into a conscription squad or were taken for bandits and attacked, not with the condition the company was in now.</p><p>	“That is, indeed, what you said,” Hammer replied, raising her voice over over the bone-churning noises coming from behind the medical wagon. It was never <i>nice</i> overhearing Sawbones yank teeth, but Mute’s shattered ones apparently needed a special touch, or at least that was what Demise had gathered from her comments about “fishing out bits of root.” Whatever was happening out there was making the normally taciturn woman shriek like a banshee.</p><p>	“What happened to “we’ll go south and stay out of the way?”” she asked Hammer.</p><p>	The other woman raised an eyebrow at her. “You expect me to fight monsters with no soldiers?”</p><p>	Only one mercenary had opted to join Hammer and Cake on their journey south. Most of the rest had insisted on following Demise to Fraldarius territory. This of course meant that Hammer couldn’t leave; two fighters and a quartermaster did not a mercenary company make. Demise wasn’t sure whether it was out of some mistaken sense of loyalty, or if they were just smelling the prospective payout from ransoming Badger off.</p><p>	Not everyone had stayed. Hunter and Bolt had indeed left and taken several of the more badly wounded mercenaries with them (a “maybe” for being able to get others healed wasn’t very convincing). They also took the oxcart, which was needed to carry both supplies and soldiers; Sawbones had done what she could for them, but she could only stretch the vulneraries so much. Cairn and Bolt both would have likely died if she hadn’t given them each the lion’s share of one; their respective injuries had apparently been worse than they’d initially seemed.</p><p>	“I expect you to go somewhere <i>safe,</i>” Demise finally said. “We don’t have the manpower for this anymore. At best we’ll be shoved into a mixed squadron with a bunch of other independent sellswords who probably won’t like us much. At worst, we’ll be sent to “make a distraction,” and you know how those end.” The simplest way to avoid paying mercenaries was to give them a suicide mission and wait for nature to take its course. The Red Bear Company had on two occasions abandoned formerly promising jobs because of orders like that.</p><p>	Hammer snorted. “So what, you thought you’d just drop Anvil and Badger off, collect your reward, and go? You thought they’d <i>let</i> you go?”</p><p>	Demise shrugged. “I figured that if Badger’s telling the truth and he’s important enough to be listened to, he’s important enough that they’ll be more focused on him than on a single wolf.”</p><p>	Hammer smacked her on the shoulder, hard. “I didn’t survive Fhirdiad for you to call yourself that.”</p><p>	“Hey! I’m the whole reason you survived Fhirdiad in the first place; I think that’s earned me <i>one</i> use of-”</p><p>	“Will the distractions on the other side of the wagon please <i>go away?</i>” Sawbones shouted. “I don’t need to hear arguing when I’m up to my wrist in a mouth!”</p><p>	They reached the front of the civil war the next day.	 </p><p> </p><p>	Forts Killian and Keir were on either side of the King’s Grace river, which formed the barrier between the Fraldarius and Blaiddyd territories. There was a salt mine on the Blaiddyd side, and the story went that when King Rhys split his lands between his children, that mine had been a point of contention between his youngest son, Killian, and his oldest daughter, Keir. Killian had built the fort as a means of protecting the mine from his sister’s attempts to take it, and in retaliation, Keir had built an identical one on her side of the river.</p><p>	Even though the mine had long been depleted and left to ruin, the forts remained. Sometimes they were used to station troops collecting tolls from travelers crossing the bridge. Sometimes they were used by bandits seeking to extract their own tolls. Sometimes, bandits set up in the old salt mine, and the forts became populated by mercenaries sent to hunt them down. Most recently they had become a focus in the war between the Dukedom and the Kingdom royalists.</p><p>	Much to Demise’s clear dismay, each of the war’s sides controlled one of the forts. Dimitri understood her annoyance; if Cornelia controlled both sides, they could claim to be there for work and slip across the river without risking attack, and if Duke Fraldarius controlled both sides, they could skirt around Cornelia’s forces. As it was, both factions would be watching the bridge carefully to stop anyone trying to cross.</p><p>	“Well, there goes that plan,” she grumbled. “Is there any other way across the river?” she asked Angler in a tone that said she already knew the answer.</p><p>	“I couldn’t stick around very long, admittedly,” the thief said. “But I didn’t see one, and I doubt either side would let one stay intact for long, or at least not nearby. The Kyphon’s Ford bridge is probably intact, but getting there would take us at least a week with all the backtracking we’d need to do. But hey, I got us some funds, at least?”</p><p>	Angler’s excuse for scouting the area had been to turn in the tail of the giant wolf for a bounty. He hadn’t gotten much money- just enough to make him go away- but tails didn’t preserve well and it was better than letting it rot.</p><p>	“How many people are in the fort?” asked Cake.</p><p>	Dimitri didn’t hear the answer. His ghosts were too loud, too insistent, too eager to congratulate and harangue him alike for giving them another member. His uncle was laughing at him, his father deriding him, his stepmother just staring at him in contempt, Dedue just staring gloomily at him from behind Glenn.</p><p>	Wait.</p><p>	Dimitri bolted for the medical wagon, ignoring Cake’s startled call and Hammer’s swearing. It couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t be. Dimitri had done his best to <i>save</i> him- for Dedue to join his retinue of ghosts was the worst fate he could imagine. His killer was long dead, disintegrated into dark magic and gore; he wouldn’t ever be able to be saved if he stayed behind to haunt him.</p><p>	He rushed to hop up into the wagon. Songbird was sitting by Dedue, swapping out the wet cloth on his forehead for a fresh one whenever it warmed up too much. Dimitri took his other side and carefully, gently, rested a hand on his chest. Watched it slowly rise and fall.</p><p>	He was breathing. He was still alive.</p><p>	Dimitri looked back. Dedue’s ghost stared at him. But how-</p><p>	“You always were a fool,” said Glenn. “He’s as good as dead. That means he’s as good as ours. Nothing you do can stop it.”</p><p>	“I’m so sorry,” Dimitri whispered to Dedue’s ghost. “I tried to save you, I swear.”</p><p>	Someone was waving a hand in front of his face. He ignored it. It was unimportant. All that mattered were the ghosts in front of him. “You <i>tried,</i>” Glenn repeated, his voice dripping with mockery. “When will you stop trying and start succeeding? You <i>tried</i> to save us. You <i>tried</i> to stop your own subjects from slaughtering a nation. You <i>tried</i> to stop the Empire from attacking. You <i>tried</i> to save Dedue. But in the end you failed. Because that’s all you know how to do.”</p><p>	Someone jabbed him in the forehead, hard. He lashed out, growling, but Hammer was ready for it and yanked her hand back before he could strike her.</p><p>	“Badger,” Demise repeated as Hammer and Cake worked together to gently but firmly pull him down and away from the wagon. “You can do the Crest thing on cue. How big can you make it?”</p><p>	Why did that matter? It wouldn’t work, no matter how he tried to use it. “Big enough.”</p><p>	She nodded. “I have a plan. Two horses. You and Anvil on one, me on the other. We slip across at night. Once we’re out of arrow-range from Killian, you call up your Crest. If they recognize it, they should avoid shooting us. You get Anvil his help, and you make sure they don’t gut me and throw me in the river before I can offer to hire out the Red Bear Company.”</p><p>	He’d missed something in his hurry to rush to Dedue’s side. “Hire you how? You said you’re in no condition to fight a war.”</p><p>	“That’s true, but we can harry the supply lines,” said Cake. “We’ll stash the wagons and hide the wounded and followers in the mine, and use our men as raiders. If we can take out their food supply, we can weaken them enough for the Butcher’s forces to take the fort.”</p><p>	“It’ll be risky,” Demise admitted. “If they figure out where we’re based, they can easily wipe us out. We’ll have to hit the road a few days back from the fort, to hide that. Hammer thinks we can make it look like the demonic beast is to blame, to hide our tracks for at least a little while.”</p><p>	“I still think I should be the one to go,” said Sawbones, crossing her arms. “They’re less likely to kill me than you, <i>and</i> we’ll get a better price if a Faerghan’s doing the negotiating.”</p><p>	Demise shook her head. “I’m not risking our only surgeon on this. Besides, it’s my plan. That means it’s my responsibility if it goes bad.”	</p><p> </p><p>	The road to the mine was far enough up the road and the woods thick enough that the wagons could be safely moved there without attracting undue attention. It just went to show how worthless the old mine was nowadays- in centuries past, the forest would have been cut clear to let people of the fort keep an eye on who was coming and going. Dimitri was surprised the roads were clear at all- shouldn’t they have been well overgrown by now?</p><p>	“Every so often, some nob or merchant or whatnot gets it in their head that there might still be salt left and decides to send in miners,” Demise explained. “It never works out, but that doesn’t stop them from cleaning things up for the haul they won’t get.”</p><p>	“How do you know all this?” Dimitri asked.</p><p>	“I passed through here a lot in my merchant days. I even had someone try to convince my caravan to invest in their venture here once. Didn’t work out well for them.”</p><p>	They left the other mercenaries behind where the road split, taking with them nothing but what they would need for the trip. No metal armor- while Demise’s coat of plates would be very useful once they were being shot at, the clinking it made whenever something hit it could never be mistaken for a natural noise. Chainmail was rejected for the same reason. They would have to rely on fur cloaks to obscure their form (Demise regretfully had to swap her white bear cloak for a much more stealthy wolf fur one) and gambesons to reduce the impact of anything that <i>did</i> hit them. They didn’t bring any weapons, either, as they were trying to minimize the amount of weight they were carrying so the horses could run faster.</p><p>	On that note, their horses were also carefully chosen. Felix was the obvious choice to carry both Dimitri and Dedue- the seal brown gelding had been bred and trained to carry a great knight in plate armor wielding a lance the size of a small tree. Two lightly-armored men, one of whom was still thin from malnourishment, would be easy, even if Dedue was in no condition to ride and would have to be strapped down to the horse’s back.</p><p>	The other was more difficult, but only barely. Only three of the company’s nine other horses had been trained to be ridden. Of these, Radish was the fastest, but he was flighty and Demise was concerned he would throw her once Dimitri flared his Crest. Borscht had the best temperament, but was stark white aside from a splash of red that fell down her shoulder, almost like blood had been spilled, and the concern there was that she would stand out too much.</p><p>	Potato, on the other hand, was a dark dappled grey perfect for blending into the night. She was also mildly stubborn and had a tendency to throw her shoes, so Demise asked Cairn to check her feet to make sure they were all still nailed on sturdily. Losing one on the road was annoying. Losing one while galloping across a bridge would be disastrous. And true to the mare’s reputation, Cairn did in fact find one that was coming loose.</p><p>	“I think she’s kicking them off,” she muttered. “Troublesome girl!”</p><p>	At least they didn’t have to worry about her spooking suddenly- both she and Borscht had been bandits’ horses (in fact, they’d been taken from the same band that Snap and Arsonist had been in) and were used to the chaos of battlefields. She’d be fine of anything short of actually shooting her.</p><p>	The three of them set out long before sundown, giving Fort Killian as wide a berth as they could manage while still staying on track. The woods obscured them from sight, but also obscured their sight of the fort- they would have to just keep moving forward until they reached the river, wait until dark, then move upstream until they reached the bridge.</p><p>	As they traveled, they could distantly hear the crashing of trees as the fort’s inhabitants cut back the forest. Not only would a fort that size need lots of firewood for warmth and cooking fires, but clearing swaths of woodland removed cover that potential enemies could use to sneak up on them. Ideally, everything would have been cut down long ago, but wars didn’t tend to start on neat, convenient schedules, and with Fort Keir so close by, sending the soldiers to do it now would just risk them being short-staffed in the event of attack. A little bit at a time would have to do.</p><p>	Dimitri didn’t want to have to wait, not when their salvation lay across just a few hundred feet of river. But they didn’t have a choice.</p><p> </p><p>	Once night fell, they carefully and cautiously crept alongside the river until they could see stars through the canopy, then they even more carefully and cautiously crept forward until they could see the bridge in the light of the waning moon. Someone had built a roaring fire near it, which was a problem. It was easily bright enough that if they got close, which they would have to, their presence would be noticed.</p><p>	They couldn’t wait where they were until the fire died, if the man tending it let it die at all- every minute they stayed was another minute a night guard could notice something odd enough to merit further inspection. They couldn’t turn back- so far, the noise of their approach had been masked by the sounds of the river, but they couldn’t count on that to always work. Dimitri considered the distance between them and the fort. If they made a run for it...</p><p>	Demise seemed to have the same idea, or at least that’s why Dimitri assumed she was suddenly pulling herself up onto Potato’s back. Dimitri followed suit, getting on behind Dedue and wrapping his arms around his friend to hold Felix’s reins. With a mutual nod, they kicked their horses into a run. The racket of galloping hooves, compared to the silence of the night, was like thunder. There wasn’t a chance that the night guards at the fort wouldn’t hear it. All they could hope was that they got enough distance before the inhabitants could mount an effective response.</p><p>	Felix pulled ahead almost immediately, but Dimitri didn’t dare look back to see how Demise was faring. All he could focus on was the bridge over King’s Grace, the river itself, and the distant fire lights on its other side. They passed the bonfire in front of the bridge without resistance. Felix’s hooves made sure of that; the man tending it didn’t even have time to realize what was happening before he was trampled. The sound of war horns blaring out suggested that they didn’t have long before Fort Keir reacted to their presence.</p><p>	The <i>tink</i> of arrows bouncing off the stone of the bridge began shortly. Demise let out a sharp curse, then shouted, “I’m all right! Keep going!” Something struck Dimitri in the back through his wolfskin cloak, but he shrugged the sensation off and kept steady. Demise was shouting something else at him, but it didn’t matter what. Nothing mattered except getting across to the other fort. They would certainly be pursued, and if they tarried...</p><p>	Once they were halfway across, Dimitri raised one palm- his shoulder moved oddly- and called the image of his Crest into being. He had no talent for magic and couldn’t make it as large or as bright as some people could (he’d once seen Annette flare her Crest to use it as a lamp), but all he needed was for it to be discernible to the people on the Keir side of the bridge.</p><p>	It got a reaction, at least. An alarm went out, easily audible even at this distance, and soldiers started to pour out of the fort like ants from a hill. Soon enough, arrows were being flung in both directions. At the least the ones from Fort Keir weren’t aimed directly at Dimitri and his companions.</p><p>	For now. None of the Kingdom soldiers looked especially happy to have nighttime visitors. That Dimitri and Demise hadn’t been shot dead already could only be because of his Crest, and as they approached the end of the bridge it became clear that a few of them would have been happy to do that regardless.</p><p>	“A couple of wolves and a Crested,” one of them said dismissively as the horses slowed to a walk. “I just hope the one balances out the others. You’ve caused quite a mess already, though, so I’m not <i>too</i> hopeful.” He turned to one of his fellows. “Go get Dame Klara- we’ll let her deal with this.”</p><p>	Felix huffed and shook off someone going for his lead. Distantly, Dimitri noticed that Potato and Demise had come up next to him. “Well, they haven’t tried to kill us yet,” Demise muttered quietly to him.</p><p>	“Give it time,” said Dedue’s ghost. Dimitri glanced down at the man’s body. Still breathing. For now.</p><p>	The commotion from up ahead slowly increased as an extremely irked officer stomped over to them. “What is the meaning of-” She stopped and stared, started to say something, and then stopped again. She finally settled on, “They said you were dead,” which caused a stir from the surrounding soldiers.</p><p>	“I need to talk to Rodrigue,” the prince said as he started to maneuver Felix through the crowd. “Where is he?”</p><p>	This simple statement caused even more commotion. Only a few of the gathered soldiers actually recognized him as the presumed-dead prince- to the rest, he was at best a bastard son of Rufus, and at worst a commoner who’d just happened to discover a useful gift. Useful as a figurehead if nothing else, but with nowhere near enough rank to just demand to speak with the Duke of Fraldarius.</p><p>	The officer had to shout down a few people who took offense at this. But fortunately, they were soon enough being directed to the entrance to the fort. Every so often, Dimitri could hear a raise in the ambient volume of the camp as a fresh batch of soldiers received the news that their prince had returned. </p><p>	He allowed the gathered soldiers to help him down from Felix, then turned to cut Dedue free of the straps holding him there.</p><p>	“About fucking time,” Demise muttered as she dismounted Potato.</p><p>	Dimitri noticed the outraged look on a soldier’s face in time to intercept him before his raised fist could turn into a blow. He couldn’t be sure whether it was over what she said or what she represented, but in the end it didn’t really matter. “Neither of my companions are to be harmed,” he snapped as he hoisted Dedue’s unconscious form over his shoulder.</p><p>	Doing that hurt a lot more than it should have. He frowned, flexing the offending body part.</p><p>	“Don’t do that!” Demise shouted. “If you dislodge that arrow before a healer gets to you, you’ll be in a world of hurt.”</p><p>	Dimitri blinked. “What arrow?” Come to think of it, there <i>was</i> a piercing, throbbing pain coming from his shoulder blade...</p><p>	Demise pinched the brow of her nose and shook her head. “What did you think I was yelling at you for earlier?”</p><p>	Truth be told, he wasn’t even sure he’d heard her at all, or if what little he’d noticed had been his retinue of ghosts screaming at him. Now that he could <i>think,</i> he realized he was bleeding, and not just from his back- blood was running down one leg to pool in his boot. Demise herself had a chunk missing from her ear that suggested an arrow had just barely missed piercing her skull. He didn’t think Dedue had been hit, but he also couldn’t look closely while carrying him like this.</p><p>	Dimitri was momentarily surprised neither of the horses had been hit until Demise reminded him that it was standard practice among mercenaries to specifically target the riders- good horses were valuable, and taking them from your enemies was much more lucrative than killing them. And while Fort Killian would be staffed by both mercenaries and conscripts, it was the former who would be tasked with keeping watch at night.</p><p>	After several long, torturous minutes, the front door to Fort Keir creaked open. Rodrigue looked <i>exhausted,</i> no doubt from a combination of fighting a civil war and being woken up in the night. He certainly woke up all the way once he saw Dimitri, though, and immediately hurried to invite them in.</p><p>	The three of them were rushed into the fort and into a small room where they could sit and be attended to. Rodrigue sent for three different healers, one of whom attended only to Dimitri while the other two had a look at Dedue. </p><p>	Demise refused any offer of magical healing, claiming that she was mostly uninjured and didn’t want to take healing that could go to the other two. Dimitri suspected she was more concerned about the healer secretly sabotaging the spell, like what had happened to Grey. Regardless of why, it meant that she was quickly hurried off to somewhere she could rest without getting in the way of the healers. Any proposal regarding her mercenaries could wait until the sun rose and Rodrigue had come to terms with his liege being alive and only moderately harmed.</p><p>	On that note, Dimitri was more injured than he’d realized. The arrow in his back had wreaked havoc on the muscles and many of the veins of his left shoulder, and it was due to pure luck that it hadn’t cut one of the vital arteries and bled him out as he rode. Another had skirted off his thigh, gouging it open as it passed. The healer had to spend an alarming amount of time picking cloth fibers out of the wound before it could be properly healed. No one wanted clothing to be healed inside of them and invite festering.</p><p>	One of Dedue’s healers, much to Dimitri’s relief, was Mercedes. He could trust her; she’d always been friendly with Dedue at school and had even stood up for him once when a monk tried to harass him. She wouldn’t let the other healer sabotage things.</p><p>	The moment Dimitri was declared fully healed (it was <i>strange</i> feeling not just his old injuries, but all of the aches and pains of the road, vanish into nothing), Rodrigue came around the table and swept him up into a tight hug... which he let go of immediately once he felt Dimitri flinch. “My boy, what happened to you?” he asked.</p><p>	Lots of things, none of which he wanted to get into at that moment. Dimitri shook his head. “I’d rather not talk about that right now,” he finally answered. He could explain once he was certain Dedue was going to survive. Or never. That would also work. The less he spoke about what had happened in Cornelia’s dungeons, the less he had to remember it.</p><p>	Dedue looked terrible. His forehead was dripping with sweat from fever, and his face was wan. He barely twitched as Mercedes sent a gentle healing spell through his body.</p><p>	“Is he going to live?” Dimitri asked.</p><p>	Mercedes never lied. “I don’t know,” she said, and Dimitri felt his heart drop. “But-” she continued. “I’ll do what I can to give him the best chance of it.”</p><p>	The explanation was a grim one. If left untreated, the fester (Mercedes called it “peritonitis”) killed nine out of ten people who had it even in the best of circumstances, circumstances which did not generally include battle injuries. Even with magical healing, there was no fast cure; it would take weeks of constant maintenance -more than anyone would normally bother to spend on one soldier, much less a lowly vassal (she hadn’t been the one to phrase it that way; the other healer had, and had gotten a fierce glare from both Mercedes and Dimitri for it)- but it could be done. Mercedes would personally sit by his side for the entire time if that was what it took.</p><p>	For now, the best thing Dimitri could do was go to sleep, the healer said, and Rodrigue agreed. It had been an exhausting day, and he needed to get his strength up. Dedue would be there in the morning- Mercedes would make sure of it.</p><p>	He could finally rest.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“...Construction of a hydroelectric dam on the King’s Grace river has been halted over public outcry due to its perceived impact on downstream agricultural communities. While Fhirdiad Gas &amp; Electric (FG&amp;E) has stated that the river would retain enough flow to be used as an irrigation source, the United Farmers of Fodlan (UFF) has expressed concerns about the studies used to justify the county’s decision to allow the construction to go through, claiming that an impact study paid for by the electric company cannot be trusted.</p><p>The UFF has found an unlikely ally in this dispute in the Faerghan Historical Society (FHS), which has been campaigning to protect the numerous forts and castles that lay near the river. The FHS has...”<br/>-Excerpt from a news article in the Fhirdiad Tribune</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Dimitri becomes frustrated.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Rewrote this so many times, guh.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dimitri learned a lot over the next few days. The loyalist Kingdom forces had previously held Fort Killian, but had been forced to retreat across the river when the news of Dimitri’s death came out and dropped their soldiers’ morale to the point of affecting their ability to hold the fort. Felix had left shortly afterward, and his current location was unknown. It was suspected that he was off fighting the Empire in his own way, though. He wasn’t the only absent member of the Blue Lions, unfortunately- most of them were busy in their own lands.</p>
<p>	He’d already seen Mercedes here, and he met with Annette a few times while checking on Dedue’s status. She couldn’t return home, as House Dominic was firmly under control of the Dukedom, so she just stayed near Rodrigue’s forces and helped where she could. Usually that meant throwing fireballs at the enemy, but she also had some insight into what the Western forces would be able to throw at them.</p>
<p>	Demise also had some insight- her explanation about the demonic beast was both useful and extremely unwelcome. No one liked the idea of having those unleashed on them, and on more than one occasion Dimitri found himself quietly pulled aside by an officer and asked to confirm her story about it.</p>
<p>	More days passed, and Demise and one of Rodrigue’s generals reached an agreement about hiring her mercenary company. The other fort periodically slung arrows and magic at them across the river. Their fort periodically slung arrows and magic at the enemy across the river. The bridge was too dangerous to risk taking an invading force across on foot, so no one tried. Once, an enemy pegasus rider drifted too close and was shot down.</p>
<p>	Many times, Dimitri asked Rodrigue to take his army to Enbarr instead, but was refused. They were needed here in Fraldarius, the Duke explained, to fend off Cornelia’s troops. Dimitri tried to make him understand, that the only way to quickly end war this was was to go to the very source of all of their troubles and end her, but he was insistent.</p>
<p>	Enbarr was too far away, and his army too slow. By the time they would reach the Emperor, the entirety of the Kingdom would be under Imperial control. They would be squeezed between Dukedom troops to the north and Empire troops to the south, and that was an optimistic assessment. The Leicester Alliance was fractured, and it was likely that many of their own nobles would send forces to defend their homeland from what, to their eyes, would be an invasion from the north.</p>
<p>	“We would fall before even reaching Enbarr,” Rodrigue said. No argument would sway him.</p>
<p>	Well, fine. If Dimitri couldn’t take an army to go kill the Emperor, he would go do it by himself.</p>
<p>	He couldn’t stay for as long as it would take for Dedue to recover; his ghosts wouldn’t let him. His friend would be fine. He trusted Mercedes to keep him alive.</p>
<p>	It was time to leave.</p>
<p>	First, Dimitri needed to go to the armory. The gambeson taken from the Red Bear Company had to be returned to them, along with the wolfskin cloak and his boots. They couldn’t afford to just give away valuable armor to every person coming and going. The Fraldarius forces, on the other hand, had extras he could use.</p>
<p>	Besides, he wanted better protection than a single gambeson could give. He wanted plate armor.</p>
<p>	Most of the soldiers and even officers Rodrigue fielded had to buy their own armor, but he did provide some pieces of munition armor for those who had none (with the cost taken out of their pay), or for soldiers to wear while their own sets were being repaired. They weren’t cheap by any means, but they were far less expensive and took far less time to make than custom-built plate made to fit the intended wearer and no one else.</p>
<p>	Unfortunately, while most of the pieces had plenty of options to choose from, there was only one breastplate left that was even close to something he could actually wear. Someone had painted an X on it where it had cracked open and been repaired, which was a waste of pigment unless it meant something important (like possibly “have someone repair this better next time”). Unfortunately, he couldn’t be picky, and he didn’t have the luxury of time to wait until he could ask someone what that meant. It would have to do.</p>
<p>	It was when he went to leave and look for a weapon (he wasn’t picky- any steel lance would do, though of course silver-steel would be much better) that he noticed Demise standing there, leaning against the wall.</p>
<p>	“Now, I’m sure this can’t be what it looks like,” the mercenary said. “Because while a prince would absolutely steal from his own side, I’m certain that <i>Badger</i> wouldn’t.”</p>
<p>	Dimitri wordlessly turned and started to walk away, but Demise moved to block his path. “I think you should go back to your room, have a good night’s sleep, and forget about trying this again.”</p>
<p>	“Get out of my way,” Dimitri growled.</p>
<p>	“You’re not authorized to give me orders,” Demise countered. “Duke Fraldarius was very specific about that. Something about keeping you safe and in one piece, even if you don’t want to be.”</p>
<p>	Any other soldier, Dimitri could try to pull rank on. He was the prince. He was, in theory, the highest ranking person in the entire Kingdom. While the soldiers here were loyal to Rodrigue, they would at least hesitate before trying to return him to his room. Demise wouldn’t. Not only did she have exactly zero loyalty to the crown, she’d just spent the past week with Dimitri far beneath her in the chain of command.</p>
<p>	“I don’t need to be safe,” he insisted. “I need to be taking the fight to the enemy.”</p>
<p>	“You won’t last a week,” Demise countered. “All the healing magic in the world won’t get you well-fed again, and you won’t always be able to rely on your Crest to make up for it.” She tilted her head at him. “There are plenty of ways you can help out here instead of running off on your own, you know. There’s always things that need doing in a fort, and it’ll do the soldiers good to see their prince doing something other than just growl at the Duke. At the very least, I’m sure the captains will be happy to have someone help put the soldiers through their paces.”</p>
<p>	His ghosts wouldn’t consider that to be fulfilling his debt to them, but trying to explain this was pointless. Dimitri considered the likelihood of him shoving past Demise, then turned around and started the trip back to his room. He kept the armor, though; he’d wasn’t going to stay here forever and he’d need it eventually.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>That’s all, folks!</p>
<p>It’s the end of the fic, but it’s not the end of this series. I have some scenes that I couldn’t fit into the main fic, so I’m probably going to do a compilation fic for ‘em. And then we’ll see where my muse takes me. Hope you enjoyed the story!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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